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.

Our Miracle is finally here!

Ellayna Kathleen Holt was born Saturday, September 27th at 2:48 am! She weighed 7 lbs 9 oz and was 20 inches long. She is such a sweet baby and has already brought us so much joy, and she's not even 3 days old yet!! I'm sure you mamma's out there know what I'm talking about, but I just can't believe how much I love her already. I tried to imagine beforehand the love I would feel for her but its nothing compared to how much I love her now that she is here! The story of her delivery is one I'm sure I'll tell a million times and I'll never forget! A few weeks ago I went to the dr. and she said (to my surprise) that I was 3 cm dialated. A week later, I was at 4 cm and 70-80% effaced. The day after my appointment, I was having some severe lower back pain at work, combined with a lot of low pressure that just didn't let up. I called my dr. to see if she thought I was in labor. I talked to the nurse and they said I could be but it was hard to say. They offered to have me come in so they could check me but I decided not to since my dr. wasn't in and I didn't really feel like seeing the NP (I didn't have a great experience with the one on call). So the next day (Friday), I went to work and debated all day calling the dr. Finally at about noon I called just to see if I could come in for a quick dialation check before the weekend. They told me to come in at 2. So, I called my friend Laura to pick me up from work since I assumed they would tell me to go home and I didn't want to make Rusty leave work. I left work at around 1:30, got to the dr. around 2, and found out I was 6 cm dialated! At that point, the NP said I definitely needed to be admitted. The whole thing was so surreal. I didn't have my bags with me, nothing really ready for a hospital stay, and I really didn't feel mentally/physically prepared to have a baby!! But, but 3pm, I was hooked up to a monitor, and by about 4, Rusty got to the hospital and they broke my water. From that point, things didn't go quite as quickly. I didn't end up having her until almost 3am, after about 3 hours of pushing (with pretty much no epidural at that point). After I'd pushed for 3 hours, the dr. (not my dr.-my dr. wasn't on call) recommended we try to suction her head out because it just wasn't coming out. Once we decided to do that, she was out in about 10-15 minutes. Here are a few more pics for you to look at!!




I, obviously, think she is just gorgeous! Its funny, to me she looks different in every picture, and almost different every time I look at her! We do have a big prayer request though. We were supposed to come home from the hospital today (Monday), but this morning, little Ella tested with a really high level of jaundice. I was pretty teary eyed and worried at first but I'm feeling a little better now. The nurse who gave us the news wasn't the most pleasant woman and she basically freaked us out. But after talking to a different nurse and the pediatrician, we are feeling better. Right now, she's laying on the glow pad and we're also supplementing formula with breast feeding until my milk comes in. So far she is doing really well with the formula-they actually just stick a tiny little tube in her mouth while she's breast feeding so she doesn't really know that the milk isn't coming from me. We're praying that we can be discharged tomorrow morning. I am officially being discharged tonight but they will let me sleep in the hospital room unless they need the bed. We're praying that doesn't happen! If Ella isn't discharged tomorrow morning, I'm not sure what we'll do yet. Just hoping that doesn't happen. We really appreciate your prayers, and we'll keep you posted!!

3 cm!!

So as of Wednesday, I am 3 cm dialated!! I was super surprised! My dr. said she was going to check me and I honestly 100% thought she would say "no progress", but, then she said 3 cm and I was shocked! The look on Rusty's face was priceless, poor guy! HA! So of course I asked her what that really meant. I know women who are dialated at 2 or 3 for weeks and then even end up going over their due date! But she said she did not think I would still be pregnant on my due date. When we were leaving she said..."well, see you next week, or, maybe sooner!". I think that freaked us out the most! But once I got past the freak out point, I've been really excited and just really ready. And if you are wondering, NO, the bathroom is not done. But after this weekend it SHOULD at least be functioning in all ways...it will probably still need another coat of paint and baseboards. But at least we can use it and put all our stuff in the closets away. Please pray for us! We will both feel so much better when that is done and we can focus all our efforts on being new parents and just lovin on our new baby girl :) But I'll keep you posted on the progress (on my labor, not the bathroom)! I seriously feel like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off! They say only 11% of women have their water spontaneously break, but I just am so paranoid about that happening, especially when I'm out shopping or something!

I love pie!

This is totally un-pregnancy related but I was just eating some really good pie and thought I'd blog about it. About 6 months ago I discovered the Pioneer Woman website-if you've never been there, check it out. Its the best cooking website ever! She has pics and step by step instructions. I've tried a number of her recipes and its really gotten me back to cooking! Most recently, I tried her recipe for Scrumptous Apple Pie. Its one of the best pies I've ever had-try it, you will NOT be disappointed! Plus, I just feel like such a homemaker when I have homemade apple pie for my husband!

Other than making pie and being wife/homemaker of the year, I've been busy just tying up loose ends at work. I only have 13 days of work left, not that I'm counting!! I can't even imagine what my life is going to be like in just 3 short weeks-everything will change, and I can't wait! I had a meeting with my boss today and just confirmed my plans-I'll be taking my full 12 weeks off (and then some), and returning to work after the New Year, but then just working from home 2 days a week. I feel so blessed that I am able to do this. Its been amazing just to see how God has worked in the past few years. I love how God works-His timing is usually so different from ours, and always is so much better.

Yup, I'm still here!

Its been a busy couple of weeks! We are trying hard to make every minute count in preparation for our baby girl coming! We have the nursery almost finished, the last thing we need to put in the room is the glider and we pick that up tomorrow. After that, it will just be arranging everything and putting things up on the wall. I can't wait for it all to be ready! Last weekend I cleaned all her clothes and attempted to organize them. Its harder than I thought it would be! I felt like Monica on Friends-I was trying to categorize everything and before I knew it I had like 12 different categories. So, I have everything put away for now but I'm sure I'll reorganize everything once she comes and I realize nothing is where it needs to be :)

As far as our other projects...the bathroom is SO close to being done. I honestly never thought it would take this long-we were totally unrealistic about how long it would take. Oh well. As long as its done in the next 2 weeks I'll be happy. Its really just finishing touches at this point. I hope to be posting pics of the finished room SOON!

Here are a few pics from my church shower! My life group girls Laura, Mandy, Nancy and Carol headed it up and my sisters Sarah and Rachel helped a lot also. Thank you girls SO much for all your hard work!! It turned out so nicely and I just felt so loved!!

Me and my good friend Anne who drove 2 hrs to come to my shower!!
My friend Jen made this adorable diaper cake! I had seen them in magazines before but never in real life! It was so cute and I know it took so much time to make. I loved it!
Here is me and my great friend Laura :)
I cannot believe I am almost 37 weeks pregnant!! Its totally surreal to me that in less than a month I will be having a BABY. I can't really imagine actually going into labor and going through that process, let along bringing her home and taking care of her. But I'm so excited! So far my pregnancy is still really normal-nothing to report! My last dr's appt was last week and my Dr. actually didn't even want me to come in this week, so I have my next appt next week. I had a small scare over the weekend and on Monday when I thought my water MAY have broken plus I felt a lot of low pressure plus back pain. I called the dr. and talked to the nurse and she said it sounded like pretty normal pregnancy stuff-nothing to worry about. As of my last appt, she hadn't dropped yet so I think they aren't too worried about me going into labor early. Hope they're right! Rachel called me the other day and said she had a dream that I went into labor on September 12th. Hmm. I hope she is wrong because that is this Friday!! Well here is a belly pic I took a few hours ago-I warn you, its not too pretty! I wonder how much bigger I will get? Hopefully not too much more!

We went to the last concert where we won't need to find a babysitter! It was such a good conert-Jars of Clay, Switchfoot and Third Day. We went with 3 other couples and it was so fun! Baby girl was rocking out-she loves music!! I kept seeing this one guy at the concert who had brought his baby! He had these big headphones on him so the loudness wouldn't bother him-it cracked me up! I had to get a picture:

Here's me and Mandy hanging out on the lawn waiting for the concert to start:
Hopefully my next post will be of the completed nursery and bathroom! And the post after that...may be the big one!

Baby Farts, Nursery and Shout Outs!

Sorry its been awhile! Its been a busy couple of weeks. We finally got the nursery all painted-
YAY! I love how it turned out. We're so grateful to Russ in our small group for painting for us! The bathroom project is still in progress. I keep forgetting to take pics! I'm hoping it'll be done in 2 weeks tops! But everything seems to be taking longer than we thought, guess that's how it goes. Well, here are a few pics of the room-we still have a long way to go but at least we have a good start.
This is a really cute dollhouse bookcase we found! I love this!
Oops-this coming pic is out of order. My friend Michelle (who is just 9 days behind me in her pregnancy!) made me this awesome quilt! How sweet is this? I love everything about it-I love the colors and fabric so much, I can't wait to use it! Michelle is my oldest friend, we've been friends since we were 2 years old! I feel like almost every memory of my childhood through highschool has her in it! Sadly-she lives far away in Virginia now so I don't get to see her much, but we still talk on the phone probably 2 times a week, especially now that we are both pregnant with girls!!

Ok, back to the room pics-here is one of the painted walls with our crib:

And, one of just the wall so you can see the paint job really well :)
Finally-here is a pic of me, Sarah and Rachel from the state fair! It was a good year-the weather was perfect and we had some great food. We ate fried green tomatoes, an elephant ear, corn on the cob, corn dogs, and fudge. YUM!
This past Saturday was my first baby shower! I want to give a big thank you to my friend Lissa who threw it for me! It was the most beautiful shower and I just felt so loved. The shower was in my hometown of Lafayette and there were so many people there that I hadn't seen in so long! But Lissa was the best hostess-her and I have been best friends since the 7th grade-we were in each other's weddings, and our weddings were only 1 week apart, and then we honeymooned about 2 hours from each other so one night we all met up for some bowling and Steak & Shake-I have so many great memories with Lissa :) I'll have to post pics from the shower on my next post, all the pics are on my sister's camera.

And lastly, you may be wondering why "Baby Farts" is in the title of this post. WELL, that would be because yesterday morning, I am almost positive I felt her FART! I don't think Rusty believes me, but I have definitely become very aware and familiar with all her different movements, and of course of just how my stomach moves, and this was totally different from anything I'd ever felt before. It was just this bubbly feeling like little gas bubbles, right where her butt was! I just had to laugh, it was so funny! I just can't wait to meet this little baby girl! I feel like she has such a fun personality.

Who knows how many more posts there will be before I post a picture of my baby girl!! I'll be 34 weeks this Saturday, wow. I'll try to be better about posting! I'll have a lot of pics to share shortly. I have another shower this coming weekend, plus we're going to a Third Day/Jars of Clay/Switchfoot concert tomorrow night-can't wait! And of course I'll post nursery and bathroom pics as soon as those projects are done!

Anniversary weekend!

This weekend Rusty and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary! I have such a wonderful husband and I'm so thankful for him and all that he does! To celebrate, we made quite the day of it. We started out by going to the IMA to see the Mummy exhibit plus we walked around the gardens and toured the Lilly house. I did remember to take one photo op of my belly-30 weeks, 1 day:
After the IMA, we went to the canal dowtown and rented a "surrey"...? not sure if that is the right spelling. Its basically a cart that you can pedal. Rusty was so sweet and pedaled (pedalled??-i'm having spelling issues!) the whole time while I sat back and enjoyed the breeze :)

We ended the night by a really good dinner at a restaurant downtown called 41 West-YUM!! I had the best salmon and mashed potatoes!!
As far as our various home projects...we are making progress! I still don't have any new bathroom pics, I'll try to get those up soon. The nursery is finally coming along! The primer and first coat of paint went up last weekend and I'm hoping it will be finished this coming weekend! We picked up our crib on Saturday but haven't assembled it yet. I can't wait!

BUT-the thing I'm the most excited about right now would be my newly reupholstered chairs!! Yeah! It only took us about 7 months to get them done, but they are done, and they look GREAT!! Here they are.....

Not sure if you remember them before, if not, you can see them HERE What an improvement! One more thing to cross off the list!

Hello Third Trimester!

I can't even believe it but I'm officially in the 3rd trimester! Its so crazy-the time has been flying by. I keep waiting for the moment I suddenly feel like I've been pregnant forever and am ready for her to come out! I'm sure that will be coming soon. But for now, we have so much to still get done that I'm in no rush for her to make her big arrival :) I'm still working hard on my scrapbooks-I cannot wait to cross that off my to-do list! I'm probably half way done with my Europe book. I've made a ton of progress but there are just SO many pictures! I took a few pics of some of my favorite pages so far:



As far as pregnancy stuff is going-I still don't have too many complaints! I'm having a hard time sleeping and general getting around is getting more difficult, but overall its not bad! But check back in a few weeks-that may change!

A few things that HAVE been annoying are
*the person who asked "are there twins in there??"
*the multiple times I get told "you're due when?? you're not gonna make it". what does that
even mean?
*every time I say I'm due October 4th, the response is "wow, you have to make it all the way
through the summer? you're gonna be miserable!". Thanks. That's helpful.
*everything I say being laughed off because I'm obviously unreasonable because of "the
hormones"

Here are some belly pics I took tonight (Nancy, I am smiling in these pics! And I do NOT have a head tilt!) :)

Last weekend I went with my friend Laura to a thing we have called Symphony on the Prairie-its an outdoor concert and is so fun! They were doing the songs of Frank Sinatra. It was just such a great atmosphere, people singing along, and quite a few people even went to the front to dance!
And-finally-the big bathroom remodel. Well-it's taking much longer than we thought it would-just lots of unexpected problems. We're in the middle of week 3 of the big remodel and so far, it still looks like its in the demo stage. But really, there's been lots of behind the scenes stuff going on, and we did pass our inspection last Friday-yay! I had a pic but somehow I just deleted it so I'll post again with that later. The shower is installed but that's about it.

This weekend is the big nursery painting day! I can't wait. Not sure if it'll get totally done this weekend, but it will at least get primer! I'll post some before/after pics soon!

Long Weekend

Happy Fourth!! This post is gonna be kinda out of order since I messed up how I uploaded my pics!! Sorry! Here are a few pics I was gonna show at the end...here is my belly, 27 weeks. Sorry, not the usual shot! It was a quick "oh yeah I was gonna do that!" shot. I think this pic is a little misleading, I feel like I'm way bigger than I look here!
Saturday night, Rusty and I went and bought our travel system!! I love love love it! We had actually already registered for a different one at Babies R Us but I was feelin kinda guilty about how pricey it was! I did like it a lot but I mainly registered for that one because I didn't like any of the other ones Babies R Us had! Then, I saw this one at Walmart of all places. I really liked how it looked so I looked it up online and it got really good reviews-every single one was 5 stars! The only negative things were that the stroller is kinda heavy/bulky and there are some out there that last longer in terms of weight limit. But overall this one got great reviews, the price was pretty good, and I liked how it looked! I do admit its probaby a little more for a girl than a boy, but I think it will be fine either way:





(ok, here is where my post was supposed to begin!!)
The 4th marked the beginning of our master bathroom remodel-a/k/a "what have we gotten ourselves into?" Not that I am contributing to this project-Rusty and his Dad are doing all the work, I'm trying to just stay out of their way! Its only been 2 days and already I am ready for it to be done! Even though its just one small portion of our house that will be remodeled, my entire house is a disaster! Not sure why that would be! I'm also getting some living room chairs reupholstered so my living room looks super empty! Rusty was hoping to get it done over 3 weekends but I'm not really sure if that will happen! We just ordered our new vanity last night, thinking it would take 1 to 2 weeks top to come in-wrong! It won't be in until July 28th! YIKES. I'm sure I'll be really happy once I see the finished product but right now I just want it to be done-and so does Rusty! Here are a few pics of the pre-remodel bathroom and view from our bedroom:

Hopefully SOON I will be posting the finished results :)

Saturday, Sarah and I went to visit my Mom. I hadn't seen her in a few months and she was very anxious to see my belly! Here is a pic of the two of us-haha, love her expression in this picture, I think Sarah caught her off guard!

Well, I'm hoping to post again SOON with our newly finished bathroom. I've also been scrapbooking like a mad woman! I'm still finishing my scrapbook from our Europe trip 2 SUMMERS ago, oops. So I need to get that done for sure before the baby comes!