5 weeks old already!

Sorry no Ella updates in awhile! She has been changing a lot. She's definitely starting to look less like a newborn and more like a baby, if that makes any sense! She smiled at us for the first time last Sunday, at 4 weeks and 1 day old. Yay! It was so sweet. She actually smiled at Rusty first and then at me about an hour later. Since then, she's smiled at us a few more times but the smiles are still few and far between. Can't wait until they are more regular! I've been taking lots of pics to try and capture her sweet smile but no luck so far.

Things are getting a little better every day. Ella is a really good baby. She's going 3 hrs between feeding during the day and will go 5 hours at night. She's had a few fussy nights where she gets a little confused about it being night instead of day, but that's only happened a few times. She has a fussy time of day, usually from about 7-9. We had her 1 month dr. appointment this week. She weighs 8lbs 4oz, which is in the 29th %. We're still having some trouble with nursing and weight gain. She's taking about an hour at each feeding plus taking a supplement of pumped milk at 4-5 feedings per day. Its wearing me out! Eating is definitely our biggest challenge so far. Here is
Ella's 1 month picture:

Last Sunday Rusty and I took Ella to the orchard to take some pics. Unfortunately, it was super windy, kinda cold, and the orchard was really small and didn't have many good picture opts. But we did take a few...

Last Sunday was also Ella's first time to church! It was a lot of work to get her ready in time and coordinate her eating schedule. She did really well during the service until the last 20 minutes. She started getting really grunty so I took her out to the foyer. But it was fun to show her off and it was so nice to be back at church! We didn't get a family pic like I wanted but here is one of her getting strapped in her carseat. Notice how HUGE her tights are! None of her clothes fit her yet!

I can't believe Ella will be 5 weeks old on Saturday. The past 5 weeks have flown by. I feel like we have new triumphs and new challenges every day, but each day seems to be getting a little easier and more rewarding. I can't wait until Ella can start interacting with us more and more! I'm also really looking forward to the holidays with her!

Happy Birthday Rachel!

This blog post is devoted to my amazing and awesome sister Rachel who is 21 today!!
Rachel, I wish I could be there to celebrate this day with you! I've been thinking about you all day and keep thinking of all the fun times we've had together. I'm so lucky to say that my sister is also one of my best friends! Here are some things I love about you Rachel:
*I love your devotion to God and your genuine desire to please Him in everything, even when its really hard and it would be so much easier to go the other way
*Your family and friends are the most important thing to you
* You are so sacrificial of everything-your time, money, gifts
*You tell me things just because you want to share them with me, before I even have a chance to ask you.
*I especially love the simple times when I'm just in the kitchen cooking and you pull up a chair to just keep me company.
*You share my love of Fall, Christmas-time, Gilmore Girls, and Jane Austen.
*All the silly things we've done together and laughed about-like the graham cracker crust at Walmart :)
There are so many other things I could say! I just wanted to tell you a FEW of the things that I love about you and that make you such a great sister to me. I hope this year is an awesome one for you. I know we don't talk quite as much right now with both of us having crazy lives right now, but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of you and pray for you! Most of these prayers are taking place at about 3am right now but they still count! :)
Hope you have a wonderful birthday, I love you!!

Ella is 2 weeks old tomorrow (Saturday)!! It seems like she has been here longer than 2 weeks. I have to remind myself of that several times a day when I am getting discouraged that her schedule is still different every day or when she is fussy for a lot of the day. She is just 2 weeks old and trying to figure out what she needs to be doing! No 2 days (or nights!) have been alike so far. We had one awesome night-Monday night. It seemed Ella had figured out her days and nights and was settling into a routine. She slept in her crib for the first time Monday night-a huge unplanned surprise. I had been thinking a lot about when to transfer her into her crib and figured it would be at least a month away. But Monday night, I had already gone upstairs for the night and was putting her in the bassinett when Rusty said he was gonna be noisy doing bathroom work (uhm no, bathroom, still not done-but its usable!). So, my only choice was to put her in her crib! I was gonna bring her right back in our room but she was doing so well after a few hours, I decided just to leave her in there! She slept from 8-12, woke up to eat, then slept from about 12:45-5, then slept from 5:45-8:30. It was so awesome! That next day I felt so so good. Its amazing what a good night of sleep can do for you! The rest of the week didn't go quite as well. Ella's little personality has started to come out more and turns out she is pretty strong willed and fiesty! Not sure where she gets that...Rusty and I are both pretty laid back! She definitely has a temper and can go from 0 to 60 in about 2 seconds. So that has been challenging this week. We also went back to the dr. on Thursday and found out she has gained NO weight since last week, and is still down 5 oz from her birth weight! That was pretty disappointing since I really thought she had been doing well with eating! We have another weight check on Monday and she needs to gain at least 2 oz by then or else we may have to start supplementing with formula, which will be a big hassle and I really don't want to do that! I'm pretty sure my milk supply is good, I just wonder if I'm not feeding her long enough? She has turned into a pretty slow eater. She would probably go an hour or more if I let her! I usually cut her off when it seems like she is done but just hasn't pulled away yet, maybe I should stop doing that?

But, despite the frusturations this week, we have had some small triumphs...sleeping her in crib, I took a shower with no one else home (something I was pretty scared to do), and we made it without too much drama to the dr. on our first car ride with just the 2 of us. So...not really a LOT of triumphs, but I'll take what I can get right now!!

Now here are some pictures of sweet Ella:

In the middle of a goofy smile (she hasnt' smiled at us yet while she's awake, but smiles a lot in her sleep)
Me and Ella, she's in the middle of a small melt down in this picture. How can she not be in a good mood when I'm wearing my Office t-shirt??
Getting prepped for her first photo shoot (taken earlier today).
Not QUITE ready for her glamour shot...
Aww...there it is! :)
And...1 video. Its kinda boring, but this is just her waking up from one of her many naps! I like it because at the very end you can see her dimple! Its on her left side. Love it but hardly ever see it unless she's making the right expression!

So...having a baby is hard work! :) We have definitely been in for a reality check the past few days. I of course knew that babies were hard and I tried to prepare myself for it (HA!) but I was definitely not expecting how hard it would be. I have a new found respect for all moms and especially moms of multiples! We've had several rough nights. The first 2 days home from the hospital were by far the 2 roughest days of my whole life (tuesday and wednesday). Monday night, Ella was up most of the night and fed 5 times in 5 hours. By morning, I didn't know how I would make it. We headed to the hospital to get Ella's jaundice test done. While she was getting her test done, just all the fatigue really hit, combined with pain from my stitches and breastfeeding problems and I just hit rock bottom. There was actually a breastfeeding support group going on while we were there so Ella and I headed over to that and sat in for about an hour. I did get some advice but the class was so large that one on one attention was hard to get. After the class, I called my dr. for some pain I had been having in my chest. My dr's office kinda freaked out and said I needed to get to the ER right away and get a cat scan-pretty much the very last thing I felt like doing. But we headed down there anyways. The scan turned up with nothing wrong so we had a few other tests done and headed home. The next day was filled with stress because Ella wouldn't breastfeed and we finally had to break down and give her a bottle of formula. I had a call from the lactation consultant (I had left a message to try and get some advice), and she basically made me feel like a horrible mother for giving a bottle, I felt so bad! We ended up giving one more bottle that day and finally were able to get her to breastfeed again. BUT, after all that, today seemed to be a turning point and we had a really good day. Ella had her first pediatrician appointment and....we got rid of the bili blanket!! YEAH!! We hated that thing, it was so hard to feed or hold her with that on. Her other stats were
Weight 7lbs 4oz (down 5 oz from birth weight but up 3 oz from discharge weight), 33 percentile
Length 20 1/2 inches (up 1/2 inch from birth length) 67th percentile

So, that made us feel good that she is growing, despite the feeding problems! We tried hard to keep her awake today so we are hoping for a good night tonight, we'll see how it goes :)
And now, the REAL reason you are reading this blog, the pictures! Here are some of my recent favorites:

Her bringing home outfit, a little big. Rusty thinks this is her rapper pose :) YO.

Right after her first bath at home. How sweet is she??



I'll try to keep posting pics of sweet little Ella! Once things settle down a little we're hoping to have my friend Amber come over to do a photo shoot for us, can't wait! We're just so blessed to have sweet Ella as our daughter.