4 months!

It is hard to believe that Joanna is 4 months today! She is growing up so fast! She loves to sit up and be a part of things. If you try to hold her in a reclining position her head is trying to pull her into an upright position. She hasn't mastered sitting up on her own but she is getting close. She is also pretty close to rolling over. She is about halfway and just needs the kick from her leg to pull her all the way. The other day I put her in her johnny jumper for the first time because she has such strong legs. She likes it because she can be up and seeing what is going on around her. I think this weekend I might pull down the exersaucer and clean it up as well. In honor of her 4 month birthday today and because family is asking for more pictures, I am including some of the latest of her.

Joanna loves Caleb. He was doing history on the floor next to her and she stared at him the whole time.

One day I laid her down on her mat and came back in a few minutes later and she had pushed herself over here.

She loves to sit in my lap and play with this mirror so I laid her where she could enjoy it on her own.

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One of her favorite spots is her bouncy seat. She loves to talk to her toys. Here she was also watching a Baby Einstein video.

First time in the johnny jumper

Her crib is in Elizabeth's room and last night when I was putting Elizabeth to bed I laid Joanna in her crib. This picture really shows how strong she is getting.

This weekend my brother and his family are finally able to come down and meet her. They are very excited as are we because we know they will be in love immediately!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy mother's day to all those reading this! Today I have reflected a lot on how the Lord has blessed me as a mother. I still have a hard time believing I am a mother of three amazing kids here on earth and our sweet Gabriel in heaven who has such a special place in my heart. I still think about him a lot. Especially recently he has been on my heart. I look at Joanna and I wonder, "Why her?" or "Why him?". Why did he have to die and she live? But then I think that if he hadn't gone home to Jesus I wouldn't have her. And then I have a moment of guilt for loving her so much. But then it passes because I know that it was God's plan for her to be here with us on earth and for Gabriel to bless our hearts for eternity but not physically here in our arms. I knew him for a such a short time within me but I will love and miss him until I am reunited with him in eternity.

I've thought about each one of my kids and how special they each are to me in their own individual ways. Caleb is my first baby and he will always be special to me for that. In the last year we have developed a special bond through homeschooling. He has become my little protector. It's like being home with me has made him realize how hard a job I have and he is the first to defend me when the need arises. We do just about everything together and I have enjoyed having him around. He adores little Joanna and she has already seemed to form a special connection with him. He has a sweet, gentle spirit and holds his relationship to the Lord close to him.

Elizabeth was my first little girl and she is growing up before my eyes. She loves school and her friends and thrives in that environment. She is full of imagination and loves to go off and get lost in a world that she creates be it with her dolls, her books, or the imaginary friends that surround her at that moment in time. She adores Joanna as well but I think struggles a little with drawing the line between doll and human! I think they will be close as Joanna gets a little older though. Heath and I see her falling a little into the typical middle child and we have been praying about how we can make her feel as special as she is to us in a better way. We will probably be homeschooling her in the fall and I look forward to the changes that will bring about in her.

Then there is Joanna. Even at only 3 months she is full of personality. She is a very happy baby only getting upset if she has been in the car seat too long or is ready for bed at night. She is full of smiles and I think she will take after her daddy as she loves to talk to you. She prefers to be sitting up where she can see everything going on and talk to people. She has definitely brought so much joy to our household!

It has been a great mother's day and I feel so blessed to be the mother of 3 amazing children!

Like brother, like sister!

We knew it could possibly happen soon as she has been trying to put her hands in her mouth for a while now. On Saturday it was official...

She found her thumb!
Much like this little guy found it around the same age...

Everybody thinks it is so cute and it is, until this little guy is 9 years old and can't stop himself from sucking it in his sleep! Most of the time he unconsciously puts it in his mouth and we have tried everything from nasty tasting ointments on his thumb to fabric covers he wears while he sleeps. Eventually he will stop for good but that will be about the time we start paying for all the dental work!
Caleb does like the fact though that his sister is following in his footsteps! And I like the fact that she no longer wakes me during the night because she comforts herself and puts herself back to sleep. For now she is happy and quite cute and I am getting a full night's sleep!

Joy!

Next to sleeping, Joanna's smiles light up our day! She is such a happy baby and when she smiles, her entire face lights up.

These were some of her first smiles caught on camera!

Not one of her big smiles but such a sweet face.

Talking to duckie!

This is her personality!

Sleeping Beauty!

So here is the first of my themes. I have always loved looking at sleeping babies so of course I love to take pictures of my sleeping babies!

One of Joanna's favorite places is her swing!

This is how her daddy sleeps, with his hands behind his head.

Another Daddy shot!

Heath has always liked to take naps with his babies!

Joanna loves to stick her face against the side of the swing and fall asleep. It soothes her when something touches her face.

This was one of her first naps in her crib.

A nap after getting a full belly.

I am definitely not sleeping beauty but she is!

The best part of the day!

One of the best things about her is how laid back she is. She was just hanging out with Grammy and decided it was time to sleep!

  So there are some pictures of Joanna. I will have more later!

Time Flies!

Ok, yes I have not blogged since the one entry I did for Joanna's birth but I have thought about it often. With a new baby, homeschooling a 9 year old, gymnastics competitions, teaching a college Sunday school class, and just the everyday tasks I have to keep up with, blogging just gets pushed to the end of the list. I am sure there are a long list of things I should be doing right now but I will at least do an entry of our Easter weekend. A friend has challenged herself to blog every weekday for the next 6 weeks and I am going to attempt to at least blog several times a week so that I can keep family and friends updated on the growth of our sweet Joanna. She has grown so much and she is such a doll that I need to be getting pictures and videos of her on here. I have so many pictures I want to include that I am going to do my posts in themes as opposed to trying to cover all that has been going on in the last 3 months. So the pictures will be a range of ages but that way you can see how she has grown and see her personality. Of course the other kids and their endeavors will be in there as well!

We had a great Easter weekend with my parents. My brother and his family was originally supposed to come down but he got shingles and we decided it was best to wait until everyone was healthy. We sure did miss them and are looking forward to seeing them soon. Friday my parents came in and we all went to see the Earth Day movie "African Cats". The cinematography was amazing! Saturday we had our neighbors over for dinner and an Easter egg hunt and then Sunday was church, brunch, and a relaxing day at home.

By the time we finished dinner and got the eggs hidden, it was almost dark so a few eggs were not found!

Easter Sunday at church

She is such a happy baby!

It was time for Joanna to eat but she fell asleep while she was waiting for me to finish lunch.

There was a little egg hunt for the kids that stayed for the brunch after church.

We are so blessed!

We truly enjoyed the weekend celebrating our risen Savior! We had a great time with friends and family and worship was full of the spirit. My parents left today and we are back to the grind. Caleb is working on math and Joanna just finished a nap and is ready to eat. My work never ends! But I wouldn't trade it!

What a blessing!

*** I started this blog entry the week after Joanna was born and as you can see it is now a month later and I am finally finishing it! Life has been busy around here so I finished what I could so that I could post and move on to more recent events. I kept the entry just as I wrote it a month ago and then added the pictures. Enjoy!

 For weeks we had been preparing for the arrival of our little blessing on February 4 and lo and behold she arrived January 27! I got the January baby I had been praying for. She surprised us last week by coming in her own timing. It took a few days to wrap our heads around her coming early and shifting everything we planned around her arrival. She is a great baby already sleeping 4 hour stretches at night and rarely fussing about anything. But I will get to that...I might as well start at the beginning.

Last week was a crazy week beginning with Elizabeth getting sick on Saturday the 22nd and proceeding to have a temperature by Sunday of 104. It was difficult to keep down and then on Monday Caleb had it. The two of them were pretty sick through Wednesday so I took them to the doctor Thursday. Elizabeth got on meds and we were to watch Caleb but he already seemed on the mend. Thursday was busy and by that night I was tired and we were resting together watching tv. I was feeling a lot more pressure than usual but I was chalking it up to the baby shifting or being on my feet too long. I laid down on my side on the couch for a little while and when I went to get up I felt like I peed on myself. I knew I had just gone to the bathroom so I wasn't sure why I was feeling that way. I went to the bathroom and sure enough my pants were wet, more so than if the baby had kicked my bladder. I think I just sat there for a moment as I tried to process what might be happening. Had my water really broken? How do I know? What do we do with the kids? I'm not ready, I need another week. I went out to the kitchen where Heath was washing the dishes and I still laugh about what I said. I looked at him and said, "I don't want to freak you out but I think my water just broke." That statement alone freaked him out so I am not sure why I prefaced it with that. His face turned to stone and he just stared at me. "What does that mean?"

I immediately got on the computer and checked how to tell whether my water had truly broken because it had been such a small amount. It told me to lay back down and if it happened again when I got up, it was really my water. Sure enough after 30 minutes on the couch, when I got up there was no question. My water had broken and it was time to go to the hospital. We had called Heath's mom after the first episode and she was on her way. The doctor was called and he said he would meet us at the hospital. The next 20 minutes were sheer confusion. I couldn't even think about what to pack and what we needed to do next. I threw a few things in the bag and managed to remember to throw the cameras in there. The kids who had been ready for bed were watching us with a mixture of worry and confusion on their faces. Heath's mom got there and we said our good-byes and off we went. We drove in almost silence as we were still trying to wrap our heads around what was happening.

Once we got to the hospital everything moved pretty quickly. I was hooked up to everything, forms were filled out, questions were answered, doctors were notified. All we were waiting on was an anesthesiologist to get there. For those of you that didn't know, I was going to have a c-section as I had previously had two others. As we waited, Heath and I started to panic because we had not decided on a boy name. There were several on our list but none that we were sold on. Even as we were talking about names, we just couldn't settle on one that we really liked. It was looking as though the baby would be nameless for a time if it was a boy!

At 11:30 p.m. they were ready for us and took me back to the operating room. I got a spinal block instead of an epidural like I was used to. It was essentially a shot of medicine into my spine.The results of that would rear its ugly head later. At 11:58, Joanna Faith entered this world screaming like neither of her siblings did. It turns out that she was nicked by her ear during surgery and the nurses were vigorously rubbing her head where she was bleeding not knowing she had been cut there. Heath said his favorite moment was when they brought her to me and she stopped crying when she heard my voice. I was just happy that she was healthy and whole and finally with us!

I won't go into all the details of the weekend but it was long and miserable for me. I ended up with a spinal headache as a result of my spinal block that pounded whenever I was vertical. By Sunday I was miserable and the anesthesiologist came to perform a blood patch. They extracted blood from my arm and inserted it into the location of the spinal block to compress the leak. I had to lay flat for an hour before they slowly raised me back up again. The results were immediate and I felt like a new woman! Unfortunately I had not been able to enjoy visits with friends and family all weekend due to my headache but I was going home feeling a lot better.

We were able to go home Sunday afternoon and the kids were thrilled. They had been so sick the week before, they only came up to the hospital once and we were being very careful about how much they were around her. We were thankful for grandparents and great friends to keep them busy while we were in the hospital. Having had a c-section and then the blood patch, my body was hurting but I was so thankful to be at home where I could be comfortable. It was time to adjust to life as a family of 5!

When Joanna was first brought to us after birth. Notice what time the clock says!

Joanna reminded us a lot of Elizabeth when she was born.

The kids came by Friday afternoon and brought the bear they made her. They couldn't wait to see her.

Our first family photo!

Grampa's first look at his 8th grandchild

Gamma's (Heath's mom) first look

Grammy couldn't wait to get her hands on her!

Getting dressed and ready to go home!

Joanna's anal daddy is delinting her feet!

Loaded up and ready to go!

 

 

 

 

 

Get me out of this joint!