Acey Baby's first 3 months

Acelynn is just over three months old now and it is flying by! Life is definitely crazy with 4 kids, but I am truly doing my darnedest to savor these little baby moments, cause this sweet one is my last. It is hardest to remember at around 4 am when she wants to get up, but... it is actually nice snuggle time where there is no one else tugging on me, and nothing waiting to be cleaned or cooked.
I only really had that not-even-close-to-enough-sleep-delirium phase for a few weeks.  Jeff is great at helping get up with her at night once he can bottle feed her (I was only able to nurse her for about 2 weeks) and then she got a pretty decent schedule going.  For the past few weeks she has actually been sleeping from around 9 or 10 until 5 or 6.  I can not complain about that!  She'll still occasionally wake but will go back to sleep after a bottle.
Ace had some good solid laughs at 2 months, but we have a hard time recreating them and I have never been able to record them. It seems she will only tickle once, then just stares at you amused-like. She can hold her head up well and is just barely starting to tolerate sitting in the bumbo chair or laying on the baby play mat for a few minutes at a time.  She's got an adorable smile she likes to show you when you talk to her, and has really amped up her spit-up abilities in the last month, yuck.  At her two month appointment, she was average for height, in the 50's, but only 17th percentile for height!  Short and chubby.  She's definitely a chunker.

Family Days

These are just some random family days we've taken together, whether out or at home.  We sure love family time and are relishing this stage where our kids still do, too.

The Little Gym

At the beginning of this season, Amelie decided that she wanted to try something besides dance, so I found a class at the Little Gym.  After just one day of dance, Alisa decided the same and I can't say I minded having them both in the same class again. They have been loving gymnastics! Lisie just loves the physicality, getting the chance to release aaaaaaallll that energy, and Amelie is a natural, plus she really takes to the format there, soaking up the instruction.

One week, Lisie was doing her own thing (as usual) and fell off the low parallel bars.  I tried and tried to put off taking her to the ER, but when it became clear the cut was deep, and that no one else would do it, we had to take her up to Primary Children's Hospital for some staples.

Ew!!  She was a trooper, Jeff said.  He had to leave work to take her, cause I said there was no way I was doing ER by myself with four tiny kids.

Now, Amelie is saying she's thinking something new for next season.  She suggests horses, but if my preliminary research on pricing tells me anything... I don't think so.... We'll see!

Family Photos! Apr 2014

There is a studio, Pic Couture, that was doing a free session and CD for police families in honor of Law Enforcement Appreciation week.  We jumped on that!  We got some really good ones, and for free!

Acelynn Chori

On Sunday Jan 26th, I was sitting in church, when Jeff drew my attention to this stray sticker from a lesson I previously taught. It somehow ended up there on its own.  It was an omen! 

That same night, after we were home from Sunday dinner at my mom's and the kids were in bed, Jeff and I sat down to have the final talk of all talks about whether or not we wanted to induce this baby and when. After a full hour agonizing over it, we decided wait it out as long as we could and induce by the 10th. (I was due Feb 5.) At the closing up of this conversation, I laughed and then let out kind of a whiny "Je-eff."  Upon checking, sure enough, my water had broken. All that for nothing. We called Grandma Chris to come to our house since the kids were asleep, and while we waited for her arrival, I cleaned he house. (It is no fun going home from the hospital to a messy disaster... or to have your MIL come see that.) We headed in, and all the while I was hoping contractions would start, but no such luck. Got admitted (about 1 or 130 am) and started on antibiotics, then waited.

That takes the cake for biggest I've ever been! Forgive my pale, tired look. I was so pregnant and it was 1 in the morning!

Jeff was able to sleep a bit, I rested some but couldn't really sleep much. About 5 a.m. they started talking about pitocin since I wasn't contracting regularly.  I was a bit sad, but once I made the decision, let it go.  I got started low, but was moving slowly still. At shift change, the new nurse came in and said "I'm going to get aggressive with this pitocin." I absolutely hated the sound of that, but had little change in two hours, so I didn't say anything.  (At maybe 8am?) she quadrupled my dose, and that was it. It seemed like only minutes later I was begging for an epidural. The anesthesiologist (and student) finally came.  I was having really rough contractions, longer than the breaks between them.  While I'm getting my epidural, I can hear the A giving the student instructions, pointing, redoing, critiquing... and I was seriously dying.  It was about the best time I wanted to be a specimen for a long teaching moment. I was contracting so hard and so often that the nurse made me move and lie down in the middle of writhing so she could check me.  She said she was afraid I was ready to go. (I think I was at an 8.5 at that point.) They finally finished and it took a bit to set in. After an extra shot, I finally felt better.  Then, really only minutes later, I was ready to go!  Dr. Gibson came (yay!) with a student, and it was a pretty quick deal, like always for me.  After some good pushing and the same old tear, Acelynn Chori North was born at 10:28 am.  Our surprise (but not really too much of a surprise to us) girl.  My mom and Jaimie were there, too.

As per usual, Jeff cut the cord.  She was extra vernix-y, the most we've ever seen. She literally cried loud and hard for 2 hours right after birth.  It made me really scared for the future, but she hardly ever cried at all after that... phew!

She was 6 pounds 15 oz!

She had trouble maintaining a good temperature, so I did a lot of skin to skin with her and she got lots of warmed blankets.  When we finally moved to antepartum recovery, they kept commenting how many blankets she had. :)

They brought us a congratulations cake!  Fun.

Cutie with a hospital crocheted hat!

Ready to go home! (In a gender neutral onesie, of course!)

Thankfully, my recovery with Ace has been really great, too, which is what I was wanting out of a natural delivery, so that was a bonus!  Must just be cause she wasn't huge and she was my fourth.  And that makes me really glad I had the epidural. :)
Let me just go ahead and fill you in, since we get asked all the time.  We found "Acelynn" in a baby names book, it's pronounced just like it's spelled.  Ace-Lynn.  And Chori is the union of her grandma's names - Chris and Lori - pronounced Corey.  She's a sweet sweet baby, and she completes this family!

Alisa's 4th!

Alisa turned 4 this year on Feb. 3^rd, only two days before little Acelynn was due.  Luckily, she made her appearance early and Lise got her special day to herself.  I knew that whether I was 9 months pregnant or had a newborn, I would not be up for home-making a party but I didn’t want her to feel gypped in the party department.  This was, therefore, the first time we ventured into the land of... Chuck E Cheese!  Not my first choice, but she loved it, and definitely less work for mom.  It was exactly one week after Ace was born, and I was fine until the very end, when my back was really hurting.

We started the day with birthday cake pancakes with the whole family. The birthday girl decided to head to McD’s for lunch (after the doc for baby) where we spent quite a long time letting them play. We then let her pick out a toy at Toys R Us (we do this with all of our kids – they get a coupon on their birthdays, plus money from Grandma Doris – they love it.)  Then it was on to Chuck E Cheese.  Grandma Chris helped immensely by making the cupcakes, we bought a balloon and some pizza and procured some tickets and tokens for the kids in attendance – easy peasy! They enjoyed it, although Alisa was a little bit (and Carson was immensely) afraid of the Chuck E Cheese in costume.  Many of Lisie’s older cousins won lots of tickets and gave them all to her.  She picked out a giant lollipop for her prize, she’d had here eye on it since we got there.