A treat.

Carter just asked, in all seriousness, "Do Gummy Life Savers save gummy people's lives?"

I love it. 

Meet Jovie!

Miss Jovie Michelle Wiesner was born on September 1, 2013, much to the surprise of Evan and me. Yes, I know that at 3 days shy of 39 weeks, I should have been just a little bit more ready, but for some reason I got it into my head that I was going to be late. I even pushed my scheduled C-section out to 10 days past my due date, just to give little Jo a better chance to come out the natural way. So when my parents took our boys to the Sizemore family reunion for a 4 day weekend Friday afternoon, I really thought that we would get a lot done! (Or at least a bit, considering my condition.) I had a whole list of things I’d put off the whole pregnancy, you know, like packing my bag to the hospital, and all those other things that you just know aren’t going to ever  happen if they don’t happen before the baby comes. So when I got up to pee in the wee hours of the morning, got back in bed, and then wet the bed, I was very surprised. And not to add too much info to this blog, but WOW. I really thought that there would be a gush and that would be it. Not really expecting the CONTINUOUS gushing. I had to ride to the hospital with a piddle pad on the car seat!! (Ok, not really a piddle pad, it was actually a towel. But really. I was not expecting that.)

So we rushed to the hospital (after a quick shower and a very rushed pack job), getting there at 7 am, only to sit around and wait for my labor to progress. Through a day and a night of waiting, cramping, contracting and more, at 8:19 am she was finally born, and she came out lifting her head and yelling at me. She (thank the Lord), had a head in the 6^th percentile, and required less than an hour of actual pushing. It’s been over 5 weeks now, and I feel like I am healing well from the whole thing.

She is a very good baby, and other than the lack of sleep, things are going pretty well. She has even gone a few nights sleeping as long as 7 HOURS in between eating (which makes the hour and a half to feed her, burp her and get her to go back to sleep not so bad). Usually it’s more like a 5 hour stretch, though she’s still fairly inconsistent. She is still sleeping a lot during the day as well, mostly because everyone wants to hold her and her absolute favorite napping position is tucked into someone’s arms. She would probably nap in the arms of an orangutan if one was holding her, and be just as happy.

The boys LOVE their sissy, and are very big helpers when they want to be. Logan is having a little trouble accepting that she isn’t big enough yet to play, but that hasn’t stopped  him from  bringing transformers and random toys over to see. For the first few weeks, every time he came into the house from somewhere he would say “where’s sissy?” and proceed to look all over the house until finding her. He constantly wants to give her kisses and be next to her and I, and there have already been a few “disagreements” when he has to go somewhere (like upstairs to bed) and he can’t stay downstairs with her and I while I nurse. He is getting very good at pronouncing her name, as well, and tells anyone who will listen that her name is “Jovie Michelle.”

Carter is more practical about the helping, and has taken his job of reminding mommy to drink water (which I assigned to him a few days after we got home from the hospital) very seriously. He will look at me randomly sometimes, pick up a water bottle he finds and say “did you forget to drink this?” with a HUGE “I’m the most helpful boy in the world” smile on his face. Priceless. He is usually the first to stick his head in her carrier to give her a kiss anytime we’re in public and someone comments on the baby too; he seems very proud of his little sister.

A little while after she came home the boys decided they needed nicknames for her, so Logan calls her Sam or Sam-Sam  (I don’t remember where it came from) and Carter decided his nickname for her is “Wa-Wa” (also his favorite word). He doesn’t use it, though, like Logan does when he’s goggling at her, but Logan still includes it when he claims her full name is “Jovie Michelle Sam Wa-Wa Wiesner.” There may actually be another name thrown in there after Wa-Wa, but it’s slipped my mind at the moment.

For the first few weeks, both boys wanted Jovie to sleep with them in their room, and tried on a few separate occasions to convince me to wheel her bassinet (which is currently in our room) into their room. They assured me they would come wake me up if she cried. I did not give in, and they haven’t asked in a while. Logan also asked a few times for me to bring her in “Just to see” if she liked lying next to him in bed. I was hoping he would forget the idea, so one night  said, “yes, as soon as she’s done eating” thinking he would fall asleep in a few minutes anyway. An hour later, after I had brought her downstairs to Evan, I hear a little “it is taking a really long time…” from his bedroom. He had kept himself awake, quiet as could be, just to have her sleep next to him! I couldn’t resist and brought her back up. He was disappointed I wouldn’t leave her there all night, but he was pretty happy at the same time. Once he asked during his quiet rest time for me to bring her in, saying he had made a spot for her on his cot (a blanket laid out on the floor, a must for nap time), and when I said no, the disappointment in his little eyes, (especially since he had made a little spot just for her) was too much for me. Bad mom for being wishy-washy, but really, how could I resist this!  Here they are together, taking a rest.

Logan, age 4 ½ yrs.

Jovie, age 4 ½ days.

The Wiesners, September 30, 2013

The kids, Carter (4 yr), Jovie (1 month), Logan (4 yr)

Last summer

In an attempt to update the blog, I typed half a post and saved it, intending to come back to it later. When pulling it up to finish it, I came across another unfinished blog - from Aug 2012. Oops. So here is a blast from our past...

Logan found a roll of wrapping paper under my bed the other day, and brought it all the way downstairs. I saw it, and briefly objected, since they always crinkle the paper up when they play with it, but I was in the middle of something and so let him play for a minute before confiscating it. He walks in to the kitchen a minute later and hands me the roll. “I wapped da pay-pa!” It took me a minute to realize that he wasn’t just handing me the roll of wrapping paper – he had actually wrapped paper. He had unrolled the wrapping paper, laid flat multiple sheets of paper (8 ½ x 11, taken from my “to be filed” pile) and rolled them up into the roll of wrapping paper.  He was very proud.

Our Eggplant…The boys keep looking in vain to find the eggs that it must grow sooner or later. It is a miniature white eggplant, so that makes it all very confusing.

The boys’ favorite song for the last month or so is Michael Jackson’s “She’s out of My Life.” They also feel the need to remind me every time we listen to it that Michael Jackson is a boy but he just has a high voice. He’s not a girl. 

They are in their “question everything” stage (does that ever end??).  

It does, by the way, but only partially. Last summer, the boys' favorite word was "WHY?" and they would use it repeatedly. There is a bit more depth to their questions now. Logan will sometimes come up with an elaborate scenario for something, usually when we're in the car and I can't hear all that he's saying the first time, and then end it with "Could that really happen, in real life?" Uh...Yes? I think the last one was regarding a lone construction sawhorse thing blinking on the side of the road, and the reason it was
there.

 

Another mini weez

I ended my last post with "a lot of things can happen in a year" knowing something that most everyone (hopefully) knows by now. We are expecting our next little addition to our family on Sept 9th, though at the time of the last post we had waited a bit to tell everyone the news. Jovie Michelle Wiesner is expected on September 9th, so for those of you smarty pants calculators out there, that means, as of today, I've officially made it 4 days longer in this pregnancy than my last one. Woo Hoo! New records are cool.
Unfortunately, now I'm in uncharted preggo land, and I think the day I hit 35 (since I was already on weeks of "bed rest" with the boys by this point and am very much not now), my body has started to retaliate by giving me all the crappy parts of this "magical journey" that I got to skip last time. Enter the swelling feet, peeing an ounce every hour at night and all. Groan...Evan asks, "are you going to be able to make it another month?" Probably not. I love our "new yellow house" (as the boys still call it) but there is no AC upstairs and I gotta tell you - I'm feeling the heat! Wish me luck fellow readers, that I can hold out (since I have a lot of choice and all!)

As other things go, the boys are doing great and amaze me every day with the little things they say and remember. They are going to be great big brothers, since they give sissy hugs and kisses on my belly all the time and (especially Logan) get very excited when there is a new baby for them to goggle over. They are 4, however, so I think that no matter how cute she comes out, she will still take a back seat to the important things like Transformers and Dinosaur Train.

Speaking of Dinosaur Train, here are a few things about my growing boys that are worth documenting (to me):

- Carter's favorite song (for quite a few months now) is "Big Rock Candy Mountain" from the Oh Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack. Not the cute kids version, mind you, the one that sings about "cigarette trees" and a lake of whiskey.  Not sure when the switch from "hey I like this song" and the "mom will you sing big rock candy mountain" EVERY NIGHT came, but since I only knew the words to the one on the album, that was the one I sung. Bad mom. Thanks to Aunt Ellie, he even knows that there is a repeat button on the car radio and has requested (mostly unsuccessfully) to hear it 21 times. (His favorite number). Every once and a while, Logan will request it at night (or that I sit in between their beds so he can hear better), but usually not.

-Both boys are still getting speech therapy, and are doing well. They are working on different things, but they are doing ok. Carter is very hesitant to try something until he’s got it down (a habit in everything, from walking to talking to sports), so it makes practicing very tricky. He will shut down and refuse to try something if he gets a hint what you’re trying to make him do. Logan is willing to try anything and so has progressed a bit faster (even if he get the wrong sound sometimes). We’ve got s’s and f’s all over the house!

A result of this fear of doing it wrong is that (in my opinion), Carter is nervous when he greets new people because he’s tired of people saying “what?” So instead, he greets people (family and strangers alike) with “WAA – WAA!” It’s very embarrassing. It’s his favorite word, though, and uses it as his standard answer to most questions. He has even ordered “waa waa milk” once when we were out to eat (much to the waitress’s momentary confusion). Still working on that one.

-Legos are the biggest hit most days, and Logan is determined to build a “Lego World!” He actually wants us to build it for him by constructing all of the different sets he got for Christmas, but alas him mom and dad don’t have the same motivation he does. Carter likes to break things up, so that makes it a bit tricky, too.

-For a while, the boys were pretty set on their fav colors, and insisted on getting things in those colors. Carter was yellow and Logan’s was red and blue. Not much insisting lately, (like in the past 6 months come to think of it), but I wanted to get that documented anyway.

I’m sure my next post won’t be for a while, since I’ll be a bit busy in the next month or two, but I will post again.  

Before I forget again...

I know it's been a long time. About 7 months I think. Busy times. We bought our first house, and now reside (and WILL for a while) in our "New yellow house" in Sherwood, OR. There are a million little things that I always think "I should put that on the blog." Clearly, I haven't. Busy girl I am, fast typist I am not. So, before I forget this all, I wanted to put a few things down about my growing babies...

- Last spring, the boys' favorite song in the world was Michael Jackson's "She's out of my life." They would want to listen to it over and over again, and it actually worked as a bribe for a little while. Alas, they figured me out, and stopped requesting to listen to it around the end of summer. They haven't agreed on a single song since then (or a type of music for that matter!).

-We started potty training the boys just before Thanksgiving 2011. Carter took about 6 months, and then he was wearing his "Tiney-Whineys" as he liked to call them, day and night. He had cool superhero underpants too, but for a while there, the tidey-whiteys were the way to go, as far as he was concerned. Brother took a bit longer, but is officially pull-up free as well (going on about 2 months now). YEAHHHH!! I seriously never realized how exciting poop in the potty can be.

-Speaking of super hero underpants, the boys have recently gotten pretty heavy in to the idea of Super heroes and Transformers. I think they got it from the McDonald's toys (transformers) and the various Super guys on their underpants. They want to know all about each one, their names, and of course their Theme songs. Of course I don't actually remember them, and so (before I you-tubed them) I sang them as best I recall. A few weeks ago, Carter went 2 days straight singing "Gah-nah-nah-nah Gah-nah-nah-nah Gah-nah-nah-nah (repeat 25 times) BATMAN!" I'm not sure where the "G" came from, but it is very funny listening to the boys sing it. I did finally look up the songs, and found out only Spiderman really has words. I was a bit disappointed.

That's all the cute things I can think of at this minute...I'll try and post more before another year goes by. A lot of things can happen in just one year...