Sunshine

Being the good big brother he is, Jonah wanted to share his favorite song & musical abilities with little sis, Maisie.

Perfect.

My sweet, sweet love.

She Is Five

Last week my first little girl celebrated her 5th birthday. Wow, I have a 5 year old, wow I have 3 kids, but that is a whole other blog post! Anyhow, since things have been a little, well, busy around here we decided to keep both of the kid's birthdays low key and celebrate with just us. We started the day off for her with the infamous huge balloon and presents of course. It was a pretty low key day, she went on a nature hike with her Daddy where she climbed over fallen trees, jumped off logs, swung from vines and in general had an all out fabulous time. Neal said they probably walked for over a mile in the woods at the end of our cul-de-sac and she was sad they had to come home. She took along her camera so she could snap some photos of all the nature she saw and Daddy even entrusted her with his camera which she actually got some really good shots with. She is definitely following in Daddy's footsteps there with her love for photography. All her birthday dreams came true when after lunch we revealed to her the Silvermist (one of the fairy's from Tinkerbell) cake that she had been talking about for days. All in all even though there was no huge party this year with all her friends, we did our best to make her feel special and make the day all about her. We will make up for it next year when we will certainly have our work cut out for us when we celebrate 3 birthdays all within 3 weeks......stay tuned for that one!











Painting her toes the day before her birthday, a gift from Gigi and Papa Slimick, she was so proud of herself that she painted her toes all on her own.

A Few Firsts

Maisie's first cloth diaper that I put on, the midwife assistant put the first one on after she was born.....isn't it so tiny? It is a preemie size prefold! So itty bitty! To give you an idea of how tiny, these diapers measure 11x11. She has since moved on to these AND a newborn prefold together because she is such a heavy wetter! I will try and snap a picture of that, the newborn prefolds aren't much bigger, I think they are 11x13, but a bit thicker. This is my first time cloth diapering a newborn, I did not start with Jonah until he was about 3 or 4 months old, so it was a bit of a challenge getting the hang of putting cloth on such a tiny human!
10/28/2011

First time meeting Papa & Gigi Slimick
10/29/2011

First Bath
11/7/2011

First time outside in the Moby
11/9/2011

Our midwife came back on November 10th for the second postpartum visit, everything is fabulous, Maisie looks great and since her birth has gained a whole 1 pound and 1 ounce! As of November 10th her weight was up to 9lbs 5ozs. I am certain she probably weighs more than that now since she eats like a champ!

Semper Fi

Today the Marine Corp celebrates it's 236th birthday and what better way to honor his decorated veteran Marine Papa Keilty than with a spiffy new Marine buzz cut!

HAPPY

236th

MARINE

CORP

BIRTHDAY

PAPA KEILTY!!!!!

SEMPER FI

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day don't forget to thank the Veterans in your life and/or active duty service men and women for putting their lives on the line for us!

Red Friend

Jonah has a new friend. He came all the from Finland and arrived yesterday courtesy of Uncle Joe and his girlfriend, Mirka. Jonah has aptly named him, Friend.

The Birth Of Maisie

***This is kind of lengthy, feel free to not read it, I really needed to get her story down before I forgot all the details, since this blog also serves as my personal record keeper! ***


At 41 weeks I was over being pregnant, way over being pregnant. 41 weeks was October 26th and throughout the day I had experienced some random, but mild contractions, I thought nothing of it since, at this point, I had convinced myself that this baby was never coming out. So I pretty much ignored the contractions and went about my day. They eventually tapered off and disappeared. By that night though, around 7:30pm they started coming back and for kicks Neal started to keep track of their frequency, they were anywhere from 10-15 minutes apart, nothing alarming, but in the back of my mind I was getting a little excited. We continued on with our nightly routine of getting the kids in bed and having chill time together. Around 11pm or so we decided that we should head to bed as the contractions were still happening, but not as frequently and if they did happen to pick back up we would need some sleep to get through the rest of the labor process. Sometime around 2am on October 27th, I was awoken by a rock-your-world contraction and by 2:45 we were rocking a steady pattern of every 3-5 minutes. Neal and I both busily went to work getting what we could ready for the kids to go stay at my parent's house. Again the contractions, tapered and got further apart so we decided to head back to bed around 3:30am. That did not work out so well, at least for me, Neal slept fine while I writhed in pain at the non stop contractions that had me nearly crawling out of my skin. After a really hard, long contraction at 5:30am we decided that it might be time to call my parents and have them head our way to pick up the kids. The kids were up shortly after my phone call to my mom, I finished packing up their stuff and by 7am my parents arrived and you guessed it.......contractions.....not so much. We went ahead with the plan and my parents took the kids back to their house, Jonah couldn't have been more excited! Neal had a doctor's appointment that morning that we decided he should go to since the action was at a standstill. So there I was, sitting. on my couch. in a childless house. with no contractions. at all. SUCK. By 9:30am I was feeling really defeated and to be honest quite silly, like I had jumped the gun on sending the kids to my parent's house and having Neal staying home from work, I was sort of starting to get a little angry. Neal got home from his appointment at 10am we went for a brisk walk, which did nothing but give me cramps in my sides! We then decided to hit up our local health food store for some Castor oil to help really get the party started. Came home took the Castor oil promptly at 12:54pm and and felt a contraction shortly after at 1:06pm. Then for some added oomph I also took alternating doses of Black and Blue Cohosh for 30 minutes (we bowled on the Wii while I took the herbs, even with contractions I am still a better bowler!) followed by a brisk walk for 30 minutes, which this time was not so brisk due to the fact that the contractions were long and steady coming anywhere between 3-5 minutes. After the walk, contractions slowed a bit and it was another round of alternating Black and Blue Cohosh. Things really got going after the herbs were finished up and by 4:30pm it was unbearable and I thought it was time to put a call into the midwife, whom after hearing me on the phone promptly started her journey to our house. She arrived a little before 6pm, my water broke shortly after that and I climbed into the birthing pool, which almost immediately made me feel a lot better. At this point my body was completely ready to birth this baby, I started pushing a little after 6pm and by 7:13pm a beautiful baby girl finally graced us with her presence. From start to finish of the true contractions that never let up at 1:06pm until she was born at 7:13pm it was 6 hours of hard labor, a far cry from the 14.5 hours with Sophie and the 16.5 hours with Jonah! The recovery has been a night and day difference from Jonah's birth, I feel great and don't feel so out of it this time, since I managed to keep most of my blood inside my body this time.

We are now adjusting to having a 3rd little one in our home and so far so good, granted Neal is still on his 2 weeks of paternity leave, so ask me again next week how things are going! Both Sophie and Jonah love Maisie and have taken to having a new little sister very well.

Our midwife came back Saturday, November 5th, for her first follow up visit to check on Maisie and I. Maisie is doing great, she is now 8lbs 12ozs from her birth weight of 8lbs 4ozs!!

Croup is no fun on your birthday....

On Monday, Halloween, we knew Jonah had croup due to the tell tale "barking seal" cough, we just wouldn't find out how bad it would get until the following day, his birthday, when he woke from his nap.

He was most certainly not himself Monday, and rightfully so, with a fever (controlled by Motrin) and a very violent sounding cough all he wanted to do was sleep. The next day, on his birthday, he woke relatively ok and came downstairs to his huge Thomas the Train balloon, of which he adored. We played and had a relatively uneventful morning just trying to keep him from overdoing it. After lunch we celebrated with a Thomas the Train cake, which naturally he was super excited about, but as you can probably see from the pictures he just had "sick eyes" and wasn't really himself, poor guy. Nonetheless he blew out his candles with a smile on his face and happily ate artificially dyed blue frosting, as did we all :) We planned on opening his presents after he and Sophie woke from their naps, however that is not how the afternoon played out. I was in the nursery nursing Maisie and Neal was in keeping me company when we heard Jonah barking/coughing over the monitor, something inside told Neal he needed to go check on him and good thing he did, because he walked in to find Jonah sitting up in his bed gasping for air, unable to get any. Neal said Jonah had a look of pure terror on his face as he looked to Neal for help. His chest was going in and out, unnaturally so, but no air was getting to his lungs. Neal took action and got Jonah into the bathroom with the shower on full blast hot to get some steam to help open up his airway, which come to find out afterwards cold air, i.e. the freezer is best, but the steam did the trick this time, enough so that Jonah could get some air. From there we got Jonah to the doctor ASAP where he had a breathing treatment and a daily dose of steroids for the next 4 days. A scary little start to our week, but it ended well and our little guy is slowly getting back to himself. We did make sure that he got to open his presents the very next morning. He was still a little pitiful, but he enjoyed his presents.