Roses are Pink!

We decided yesterday to go ahead and use up the last of the gift cards we got for Rosalie's baby shower. We only have a Wal-Mart here so our choices are limited, but they have some super cute dresses for toddlers. So we got Caity a dress that Rosalie will wear someday, a super cute fish outfit for Rosalie, some hair ties for both girls, a bib that says, "I love Daddy", and we got matching headbands with roses in dark pink and light pink. One for each of our girls! Caity chose the dark pink rose headband, which was hilarious because it matched her outfit perfectly! I snapped some photos of our gorgeous girls wearing their roses!You can't see the whole rose, but it's the best photo I could get!
She was in a terrible mood yesterday!

Our sweet angel slept through Caity's fits... she looks so peaceful!

Precious :)

We still cannot believe just how big our first baby is getting! She's so stinking cute, it hurts! We thought we'd post these pictures of Caity in her new Little Mermaid swimming suit!*~* Caitlin Nadine *~*

Mid-step! :) Hilarious!

Rosalie's Baby Blessing

Baby blessings are a true gift from our Heavenly Father. Being the only member in my family, I often get asked why we don't baptize newborns. My answer is simple... they are clean and pure before the Lord. And they are until the age of accountability, which is 8. Then our children are given the choice to be baptized. What a wonderful blessing. To give our children the choice.

Rosalie's baby blessing was yesterday. My Mom and Dad came from RO to see the blessing and stay for sacrament meeting. I'm always nervous when my family comes to church. I think it's more excitement than being nervous. I just love having them there with me. To feel the Spirit, hear testimonies, and share in the pure love of Christ. It never fails... every time I see Charles cry, I cry. He held in his tears until after the blessing was done, but like he did with Caitlin, I had to give him a good 5 to 10 minutes to compose himself afterward. He says that he felt the Spirit so much during her blessing that he ended up pausing for at least a minute during her blessing. It was beautiful. He said that he looked down at Rosalie and saw her infinite potential to do anything she sets her mind to. Anything at all. He realized that that feeling must be what Heavenly Father feels when a child is born into this world. Infinite possibilities to do good things.

I love that I have a worthy husband to bless our children!

The day turned out to be b-e-a-utiful! The sun was out all day, the wind was gentle, and the Lord was smiling down on us the entire day! We went over to T's for chinese and to hang out after supper. It was delicious, as always! :)
Here are some photos from our day :)
Enjoy!

Our Forever Family!

Rosalie Cadence

Heavenly Feet

Welcome June... Welcome Tornado Season

Yesterday was full of tornado warnings all over Iowa, Nebraska, and surrounding states. I honestly thought that we were quite lucky at mid-day when the first of the warnings hit in Northwest Iowa. It was sunny here. A little while later, the warnings got lower down towards our part of the state. But the sun was still shining here. Odd, I thought.

Charles got home and we wanted to head to the store right away because the storm clouds were moving in and I was getting nervous about having the girls out in the rain. We made it to Fareway and out again without getting rained on too terribly. I ran Rosalie out to the Jeep and Charles looked like a mad man running with Caity in the cart! The poor Fareway kid had to stand in the rain and load our groceries in the back of the Jeep. Bless his heart! And his job! Not to mention that I was standing right next to him helping! My job: Being a Mom!

We went to Hy-Vee next to try to find Ziti for the Chicken, Broccoli, Ziti One Skillet Supper I was going to be making for supper. That's when the first Warning in our area went off. There was a tornado about 20 miles east of our town. The sun was coming back out while behind us, it was almost black. That tornado hit a farm and caused over 3 million in damages. The family lost their home, machine shed, 2 combines, livestock, etc. After the tornado warning was lifted for that area, over 250 emergency response people and volunteers helped the family out and gathered livestock back into fenced areas. Photos and Story HERE.

We got home, I packed a "tornado diaper bag" for the girls and I started dinner making the comment, "I don't want this to be my last supper!" Dinner was amazing, by the way! I love America's Test Kitchen recipes! I kept an eye outside and watched the clouds.

It was about 7ish when I had the sudden urge to go look outside. Freaking-A... HUGE black wall cloud. By the time it took me to turn around to tell Charles about the wall cloud, the sirens started going off. The city JUST put a HUGE siren right outside our house, so it was hella loud. Charles and I looked at each other, I grabbed Rosalie and the diaper bag, he grabbed Caity and we ran downstairs.

Charles ran back up to get a sheet, the car seat, and some toys for Caity. The "rotation" was north of town so he felt safe enough to run up really quick. We stayed down in the basement for a good 30 minutes until the "all clear" was announced.

We eventually calmed down for the night, had family prayer, and put the girls down. We had an uneventful night... I thanked God! Now that we had a crash course in "running with the girls down to the basement", we are now fully prepared with our bags downstairs and a path cleared to run if needed.

Please pray for the family who lost their home and for safety over our area. No tornadoes, please! I didn't have babies to come into this world and be harmed by mother nature. Please keep us safe!

Gorgeous :)

I just wanted to share this photo of our gorgeous girl, Rosalie! :)

We have truly been blessed with a healthy, uneventful pregnancy, followed by a healthy, gorgeous baby girl!

Happy First Week, Rosalie!

These past few days have gone rather well! We welcomed Rosalie into this world a week ago today, which is crazy because it feels as if she's been here much longer than that. Much longer. Our home life has remained rather quiet. We've had few guests and few phone calls. Which is nice! I don't want too many people around Rosalie due to her being so new and being a magnet for germs. Call me paranoid, a germ freak, or overprotective, but I'd rather be that than have a sick newborn. We were the same way with Caity because she was a preemie, but I'd rather play it safe than sorry.

We've been blessed with meals from the relief society sisters! They have helped us out so much! Our budget is so tight that we ran out of money in our "food budget" right before we had Rosalie. So having willing sisters prepare meals for our small family has been a HUGE blessing! We've had some delicious meals! Hamburgers with all the fixings, shepherd's pie, lasagna, chili, pizza... it's been wonderful having a variety! Thank you all so much! :)

Rosalie is breastfeeding every 2-3 hours during the day with spurts of eating every hour on the hour. Her night times have smoothed out to every 3 hours. The first few nights we were going every hour. I guess I don't mind feeding her since her bilirubin count was at 11 and we're trying to get her jaundice down. More breast milk means more urine output and more dirty diapers. Which means less bili in the system. Caitlin had it much worse. We're counting our blessings!

Caitlin is still having some jealousy issues with Rosie, but I think that it'll never really change. Sibling rivalry/jealousy is normal. I was the only girl in my family for a long time and my brothers were always jealous of me. Though I have to give Caity credit, she does love on Rosie quite often! Giving her kisses and rubbing her head and back! I've noticed Caitlin will come over and cuddle with me after I feed Rosalie or just at random times during the day. I always tell her I love her and give her lots of kisses. She's taking all of this rather well!

Charles goes back to work today. If he works today, than he gets the Monday holiday paid. Originally, he was going to take this whole week off, but his supervisor told him that if he wants the holiday pay of time and a half for Monday, he needs to come back Friday. Their policy is that you have to work the day before and the day after the holiday to get paid for the holiday. So he did. It's my first day alone with my girls! I'm not nervous. I'm more excited to have Caitlin back in her normal routine and having Rosalie along for the ride!

We took some pictures yesterday of our girls in their "Big Sister" "Little Sister" outfits I made for them. Well, I put the words on the shirt and onesie I bought. I used puffy paint! Here is the best photo of the 10 or so that I took!

Sisterly Love

We were worried about how Caitlin would react to Rosalie when we brought her home from the hospital. Most times, she looks at Rosalie like this:

Then we ask her, "Do you love baby sissy?" and we get this look:


This is going to be fun!

Welcome Rosalie!

Our sweet angel came into our life last Friday! We got up and got ready for the day ahead of us. We took one last photo as a family of 3 right before we left for the hospital. We checked in around 7:30 and Charles left to take Caity to T's house for the day. I got settled in and hooked up to the monitors. My contractions were 3 to 4 minutes a part. I opted for NO pain medicine at all. Told the nurses that right off the bat so they wouldn't ask me at all. They never did!

Around 8:30, Charles returned and Dr. G broke my water at 8:40. My contractions didn't start picking up until about an hour afterward. I sat in the rocking chair and rocked through my contractions singing primary songs in my head. It helped.

A little after 12:30, I was checked and I was dilated to 8 cm. I had another contraction and dilated to 9. That's where I stalled for the next 15 or so minutes. I told Dr. G that I needed to push, but he said no. The right side of my cervix was only 95% effaced and I was at 10 cm. He massaged my cervix during a contraction and it HURT. But after that, it was go time!

4 contractions and pushes later, we welcomed our sweet girl into the world!

Rosalie Cadence AustinMay 21, 2010
1:17 p.m.
8 lbs 7 oz
20 inches long

I know Heavenly Father and the angels were rejoicing with us as we celebrated a new life in our world! It took absolutely everything I had in me to give birth without any sort of medicinal help. By far, the shoulders were worse than her head! I think that's why my face is so disgusted in the picture up above... it friggin' HURT! I know I was saying, "My sweet baby girl!" but my face was saying otherwise! It's kinda funny... but oh well! It was the second most incredible moment of my life! Tied for first with the moment Caitlin entered the world!

I had the shakes for a good hour after I had Rosalie. I felt like I shouldn't hold her, so Charles go to hold her quite a bit in the first hour. He enjoyed it! :) I felt wonderful after I had some Motrin in my system after the delivery! I breastfed Rosalie and she took to it wonderfully!

I spent a grand total of 2 days in the hospital. We welcomed Rosalie home on the 22nd and our first few nights have gone well. Rosalie is an oinker, eating every hour during the day, and every 2-3 hours at night. Caitlin just loves little sister! She tries to poke her eyes! Don't know why... but it's kinda cute! She'll kiss her head and rub her back! But she is jealous of her. We have a long road ahead of us, but every day is going to be SO worth it!


Rosalie and I about 2 hours after I delivered her.

All of us girls!

D-Day!

I woke up this morning and looked outside to see this gorgeous blue/purple hue to the sky. The birds were chirping and there was a dense fog that was really low to the ground. It was gorgeous. And I realized...

Today is the day. D-Day. Delivery day.

I am so excited! Yes, a little nervous, but more excited than anything else! Not for the pain, the aches, the stretching of my... ya know... but most of all, I'm excited to FINALLY hold this baby who has officially made it to 40 weeks with me.

I honestly never thought I'd ever go full term. God saw otherwise, and I couldn't be happier!

The plan for today, GET BABY OUT without pain meds! Wish me luck! It's been done before! Just not by me! I pray that Heavenly Father will guide my labor and delivery and keep me strong. We will post our labor and delievery story along with pictures of our sweet baby as soon as we can after she arrives!

I am so, so excited to meet Rosalie!
(or Jason... if the ultrasound lady was wrong...)

TOMORROW! You're only a day away!

Tomorrow we will officially meet our sweet baby Rosalie! (Or if it's a surprise and turns out to be a boy, we'll be meeting our sweet baby Jason!) Either way, we will be meeting our baby tomorrow! Unless I pull a 24 hour labor... then I'll be meeting baby on Saturday! I'm just excited to be in the hospital, in labor, and not being sent home!

Today is going to be filled with the last of the cleaning. I've been keeping up on the house since my last labor scare, so there really isn't much to do. Thank goodness. Just some random dishes, laundry, sweeping, moping, vacuuming, etc. We will also be loading the Jeep up with the car seat, overnight bags, and stuff for Caity to spend the day with Aunt T!

We are going to spend the last day as a family of 3 doing what we do best! Nothing! Ha! We're going to have just another normal day/night. We're going to play, sing, and dance like we have done every night with our sweet Caity! Give her a bottle, brush teeth, get PJs on, sing some soft songs, and rock her to sleep! I think she knows that baby sister is almost here! I just know she's going to do just fine with her here! She's our little baby Momma!

Last night was hilarious! Sesame Street came on for the second time and we were all singing along with the Elmo's World song when I looked over and saw Caity on the couch, lying down, watching Elmo! Here she is in all her cuteness!

She's just like her Daddy! :)