Soccer Times Two

Ah, pictures of sunny Saturdays at soccer games . . . Makes me feel a little wistful for those days and that weather, but it will come again, and now we have Lissy, so next time it will be better. Not the point. The point is Josh and Noah. BOTH of them got to play this fall! Noah was so excited to finally get a chance, and Josh loved it as much as ever. And since we have friends on both teams, it was always a good get-away for me. Win, win. There were also chances to play at the park for Andrew. Win again.

From the moment we brought home his new cleats and shin guards, Noah was pumped. He put them on and ran around the house "being a really good soccer player." However, I was afraid that when the real time came, he would be timid. Not so. He got to be on the same team as his good friend Cooper, and while they could be silly during (even little) breaks in the action, they were totally focused on that ball while it was in play. At first Noah had a hard time with his general coordination, and didn't get much more than a few kicks in. He said he would score goals with "his secret weapon Cooper," who scored a lot. Then one day Cooper was gone, and for some reason Noah was able to really step it up. He scored 5 goals that day! While that was his best game of the season, he was always right in there after that, and while he still tripped, he also sometimes scored. It was a blast seeing him be excited. I wonder how long I'll be able to scoop and hug my little athletes as they run off the field . . . Don't know, but it's pretty great.

Josh moved up to the next league (kindergarten league, the big time), and it was fun to see that the herd mentality was starting to disappear. Josh had some games where he'd get in there and score quite a bit, but for most of the season he declared himself to be a defensive specialist. Nobody asked him to, but he told me, "Will is really fast, so he can score a lot of goals, so I'll play defense." So, he kind of hung back, and did a pretty good job of getting in the way of the ball. He was excited about the games, and counted each goal as a team goal, so hey, why not? Josh is not exactly quiet when he makes remarks during a game, which can sometimes get chuckles from spectators. Once he went into the game after sitting out for a few minutes and started playing really well. People started cheering for him and he yelled, "It must be all of those crackers that I just ate!" 

I had a hard time, as always, getting quality photos of the action, but here's a little taste . . .

Warming up for the big game - Noah is the one on the far left.

I told Noah I was going to take his picture and he did this action pose.

This shot is of the kids lining up for kickoff. I think it's hilarious that this is the  approach they take . Noah is the shirt-eater, and his friend Cooper is in the middle.

Josh is the one throwing in the ball.

Josh takes kick-off a little more seriously. His friend Ben is kicking, Josh is to the right.

Josh wanted me to take a picture of him being the soccer ball.

This is Noah, actually playing in the game. What his teammates are doing is hilarious to me.

There goes Noah!

Josh's team name was the Green Dragons, so for the last game (which was close to Halloween), they got green dragon face paint. Here's the team, roaring their intimidating roar. Josh emailed this picture to his teacher and said,

"I scared the other team. The other team ran away like crazy. They didn't play for the whole game. I am just kidding. We actually played. It was fun." I enjoyed his little sense of humor with that.

For the second year Gary is the assistant coach to Ben's dad, Spencer. The kid with his arm around Josh is Tanner, and next to him is Brooke. Brooke is in our ward, and Tanner is now in Josh's kindergarten class. This is the second year being on this team for most of these kids, and it's really cute to watch how they have become friends and learned so much about soccer together.

Native Americans Don't Wear Their Shirts

My cheek was cuddled up against Andrew's, as I gave my chubby little toddler one last hug before leaving him to nap. Right as I was giving a little sigh of contentment I heard Noah say, "Native Americans don't wear their shirts." Okay. Amusing to me because it's a lovely mix of a PC term and a racial stereotype. And also assuming they have shirts that they don't wear. Anyway, when I left Andrew's room, I found Noah's statement was part of a whole thing they were doing. This.

Yep. They declared themselves to be Native Americans.

Josh wanted a picture of himself shooting his bow and arrow.

Josh was really jealous that Noah had time to give himself a collar before I caught them. He was a bit upset  I wouldn't let him add one. I mean, it does look pretty great.

In response to a question, I guess I forgot to say this is permanent marker. Big shout out to Mary Kay Deep Cleanser for the great work in getting it off.

No Tricks, All Treats

Recommendation: If you are going to have a baby right before Halloween, try to do it 8 days before Halloween, instead of 4. I actually had fun this year, unlike two years ago when I was up all night about to cry. So, about the fun year . . .

 It was a gorgeous day, the kids were excited out of their minds, and I actually put on makeup and dried my hair to go to the store earlier in the day, so I went out trick or treating for a little bit. Dressed! (Not in a costume, but for a week post-baby getting dressed is like a costume.) I love watching the kids be excited, and seeing neighbors while we are out and about. As a bonus we had a cute little kitty that was sleeping cozily in our arms we got to introduce to a few people. Josh was determined to be the turbo-trick-or-treater, so we had to remind him often to wait for us, which he was willing to do when he realized what he was doing. He was really in the Halloween zone. Andrew was really hard to get out the door. He was having a tantrum/meltdown, so getting him a costume was a battle, getting shoes on him was almost a whole war, getting him outside required bribery . . . and then he realized what he got to do. Happiness came quickly. I went home after a block and a half, and Gary stayed with the boys a little longer. In the end Andrew was trying to get Gary to hit a few more houses. So cute. This is the Halloween I love, the Halloween that is for kids. Some little boys that dream for months about being ninjas and getting candy. Simple. Awesome.

This year we got our pumpkins from Farmer Grandpa. The kids got to see the pumpkins grow whenever they visited, but then got a bunch to have at our house. Here they are carving them. Gary let the kids tell him what they wanted, and they got to approve the design on a drawing before the actual carving.

Where was Andrew during the pumpkin carving? Right here on the couch, and since this was his only nap, that explains the hard time he had later. Poor kid, when he turned his head it was drenched in sweat from having his face shoved into a leather couch.

The kitten was cute, but tired. Couldn't get the perfect photo.

The binkie saved the day.

The kids were so excited about their Jack O' Lanterns, we had to get a photo of how they looked all lit up. By the way, putting up the spider web is a great memory. It was about a week before Lissy was born, and I was miserable. I decided I'd clean the fridge that day. But then Noah started asking to decorate for Halloween. I almost said no, because of the fridge, and then I thought, "What am I doing?" And got out the decorations. It was a beautiful day, my boys were hilarious, and it was just perfect. As we put in the spiders they said things like, "Ah, one of them bit me, now I have spider sense!" Andrew put on a dinosaur costume and walked around roaring at us. Fridge, shmidge.

Counterfeiters, Rockstars, and Divers . . . and Their Mom

How is it that one second you wonder if you will ever get married and have children, and the next you find yourself in the middle of the night with a wiggly newborn in one arm and a tall stack of laundry in the other trying to maneuver yourself onto the bottom bunk to listen to your 3 year old tell you about his nightmare? At that moment I was struck by just how different my life is now than it was 6 or 7 years ago. I mean, I'm kind of into this mom thing pretty deep by now. Crazy. The nightmare was about pandas and lava, by the way, and giving him a kiss was a pretty difficult task. But I did it.

When Lissy was about a week old Noah remarked, "Lissy doesn't even have her peepee yet." (Um, yeah, new things to talk about with a girl around . . . )

Josh found a sweet $120 Star Wars Lego set in the paper. Gary told him it was pretty expensive, and Josh got all exasperated with him. "Dad, you need to learn to make those green dollars," he said, "They're made out of paper!"

A while back I went to Walmart with my kids on a really windy day. I tried to prep them for it. "Okay guys," I said, "I'm going to get a cart, and you have to sit in it really quickly so I can run us all into the store as fast as we can. It's too windy to mess around." Noah chimed in with his idea. "Or, we could just get in the wind and fly to Walmart." "The wind is blowing the wrong way, Noah," Josh said, "We would just go to Jiffy Lube." Yep, that's my children. Josh wasn't concerned about the flying idea, but the fact the wind was blowing the wrong way.

Tonight Josh and Noah decided that if they didn't button their pajama tops they looked like rock stars. So, they kept them unbuttoned as they got ready for bed, and stopped every now and then to rock out and sing, "Na, na, na, na, na, na . . .," metal style.

My boys like to say, "I believe I can fly!" Then jump off of stuff. They recently changed it to, "I believe I can fly . . . scuba dive!" Yeah, that involves jumping off of stuff face first. So far it's been onto beds, but the whole thing is a little scary, especially when I hear Andrew yell, "Scuba dive!" A little scary, but also a little funny when they coordinate jumping off at the same time. Hopefully this is not indicative of a cliff-diving future . . .

It's Official - Andrew is Two

Gary and I chuckle at Andrew every day. He is just so cute. He literally bounces everywhere he goes. He's still in the 98th percentile in weight but only around the 60th in height, so he remains a big boy, and all that chub is just so huggable. I was afraid he'd never give me "huggies" again after we turned his life upside down with a new baby, but the hugs are coming back, along with a whole slew of "I can because I'm two" traits. He's definitely talking a whole lot more, and loves to listen to longer books. He sings all the time, even if he doesn't know all the words. Just turn on the radio, he'll sing along. He recently had his second birthday (two days after I got home from the hospital), and we tried our best to make it fun despite the nuttiness. Here's all about Andrew . . .

This kid is ridiculously strong. Gary was lifting the shovel up and down, and Andrew was hanging on by himself. For a very, very long time. He's been able to hang like this since he was really young.

We took this picture because after eating his cookie, Andrew had the perfect Hilterstache.  His smile is too  cute for it to show up here, though.

So relaxing . . .

The terrible twos can be terribly funny sometimes. Andrew has been stripping off his jammies after we leave the room at night. On the night of this picture, we left him snugly tucked in, and went back a couple of hours later to find this. Gary was thinking Centaur or Merman.

Opening his present from Grandma S.

He loved it and immediately began playing (yeah, wearing Noah's shoes.)

My incredible cake decorating . . . Actually, Andrew LOVED it. Couldn't leave it alone from the second he saw it. So, that's what matters. Plus, it was to die for delicious. Win win.

What to do when suddenly you find yourself as the center of attention? Awkward.

Don't worry about the celebrations, go straight for the dinosaurs.

Josh was there to support Andrew with his candle blowing needs.

OK, so 3 boys, 3 dinosaurs, you can imagine what happened after the candles were blown out.  Wait, did you also imagine that they used the dinosaurs as forks? Yep, that happened, too.

He had to stand on his tiptoes to get into his present. Pretty awesome.

Dinosaur train! He loved it. He actually is saying, "Oh!" They all played with it immediately, of course. He calls it "Ductor." (Conductor)

Andrew is super tight with his awesome brother Josh who is a willing horsie for Andrew's "rides." 

Just yesterday as I was watching Andrew I said to Gary, "Nobody else gets to be Andrew's parents. Just us. We get to have Andrew as our boy. How lucky is that?" Very lucky! We love you, Andrew!

Solarica Is Here! (With a Name Change . . .)

Solarica Alica

October 23, 1:53 p.m.

7 lbs. 12 oz.

21.5 inches long

Everybody healthy despite the sleep deprivation.

5 days after her birth, her name changed to Elisabeth Kae, nickname Lissy. (Sorry Josh, we tried to warn you that it had to happen . . .)

That's the short version. You want more, just keep reading. It will get very long, so choose your own adventure.

She is so little! 7 lbs, 11.8 oz is small for our babies, and I'm not complaining one bit.

Only a few minutes old with her proud daddy.

Just brand new . . .

I should always pull back my hair when being pumped to swollen with IV fluids . . . Sigh. The point is I was REALLY happy when I saw my baby. I love the feeling right after the baby comes!

My man brought me flowers! They were so beautiful and made me feel loved.

Josh is so cute with Lissy. He is good at holding her and being soft with her. One time  he was sad, so he curled up with her in a chair. I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Lissy is making me happy." Oh, yes, and he is using her real name now, after initially being very disappointed about not naming her Solarica. He told us Elisabeth was a dumb name about 8 times the first morning. However, soon he said, "What's Solarica's real name again?" Poor kid, he really did think he had a winner of a name. Good thing he's a sweet loving boy.

Andrew always says, "Want hold it." He loves hold her, but oh, my, we have to be careful.

Nomination for cutest big brother ever. Andrew was so excited when Elisabeth first came home.

Noah is a super sweet big brother, too. He has made plans to take her down the slide at the park on his lap in the spring.  He also played "Protect Lissy" yesterday when he and Josh made shields.

Elisabeth with my dad. I planned to have pictures with other relatives that came to call, but I gave the camera to Gary  to do so when I left the room. Bless his heart, he didn't even take one picture. That's okay, Lissy, just know that people came to visit you. Grandpa drove all that way and back in one night just to meet you!

Thus begins the battle of trying to capture a good photo of my baby.  I  had this problem with other babies, too. I take pictures of them, and it just doesn't look like them. Looking through the pictures of Noah, it seems like I don't even have one that really shows what he looked like. I fear the same thing is happening with Elisabeth. But here are my efforts thus far . . .

Looking up at Daddy

All swaddled up, her favorite way to sleep.

The Birth

(Title should serve as a warning to those who don't want to know anything about it. :) ) This time the most dramatic thing about the birth didn't end up to be the birth itself. Thank heaven! After having four babies, what I have learned about childbirth is, there are no pre-labor signs that definitively mean anything. At all. Contractions, even consistent ones that keep you up at night - can happen for a couple of months. Dilating - You can walk around dilated for quite some time. You can be a 3+ at 37 weeks and then go overdue. Effacing? Same story. I knew all that coming into this pregnancy. Now I have a couple more non-signs to add. I felt TONS of pressure from the baby from 36 weeks on. Enough pressure that I literally could not stand up straight. Pressure that I've never felt outside of the delivery room before. I was freaked out that the baby would come early because I was not ready. Due to a series of unfortunate events, my room and my kids' rooms were torn up, with absolutely no place to put any of their clothes. It seemed like every attempt I made to get things looking great around here was met with some strange obstacle. However, after about 2 weeks of the pressure, I had things looking okay enough that I could live with it, and didn't care too much about the rest.

I woke up at 38 weeks with what felt like extreme back labor, packed my bags for the hospital, and wondered if I'd be able to make it to one last soccer game before baby girl made her arrival. I made it to both. And to the store that day. And to a birthday dinner with Gary on Monday. (He got someone to watch the kids and took me to eat Lebanese and Moroccan food. Delicious!) I thought we might be going straight to the hospital after dinner, since I had a contraction every 10 minutes on the way there. But they went away. And two days later the pressure went away. After feeling like I was in labor for 2 weeks, I felt soooo much better. But I was still pregnant. Uh, oh. Why uh-oh? Because I had scheduled an induction for 39.2 weeks, and I didn't really want to be induced. I'd never done it before. It was scheduled to try to avoid having a gargantuan baby like Andrew, which sounded like a good idea, but I never thought I would make it to that date. Why would I think that? I felt like I was in labor (and I had done it 3 times past, so was crazy enough to think I knew what it felt like). 

I was nervous and scared. For reasons that are all complicated and won't describe more here, I was an emotional wreck. It wasn't supposed to happen that way! I wanted my little boys to see their new sister in the hospital before they got whisked away, but an induction would mean they would be long gone. When I realized this, I totally lost it. I couldn't really answer my boys, either, when they kept asking, "Mommy, why are you crying?" However, I felt really blessed. Right as I was coming unglued, one of my friends called to see how I was doing. She is extremely health-conscious and I trust that she wouldn't do anything she hadn't researched and felt really good about. Because of various things, she has been induced four times. What a perfect person to call! Talking to her, and to another trusted friend of mine that has been through it, made me feel a ton better. I felt like Heavenly Father sent me those people at just the right moment, and that He was trying to tell me to go through with it.

So I did it. Gary and I dropped our kids off, had dinner together alone, and had the evening all by ourselves to put together furniture, sort clothing, vacuum the horrible white styrofoam that had overtaken our house, and talk about the next day. We didn't get to bed until 1 a.m., and were expecting not to get a call from the hospital until later in the day. So, we were surprised to be awoken at 6 a.m. by the phone ringing. We were going right away! (After I got totally ready - one plus to knowing what's coming.) A blessing before we left really helped, but I was still nervous. I asked the nurses and doctor a million questions about what was normal and how things were going. While we waited for things to get going, Gary read a baby name website, and we discussed names. Since it was Sunday, and our religion was listed on our admitting form, we were asked if we wanted someone to bring us the sacrament. I didn't know that it would be possible, but we jumped at the chance. I was expecting it to be nice, but as I sat there in a hospital bed, getting ready to bring a new life into the world, feeling the discomforts of labor, the words of the sacrament hymn immediately brought tears to my eyes. Thinking of the Savior's sacrifice at that moment was overwhelming, and I suddenly realized where any strength I had was coming from. It was an amazing, humbling experience.

When I started feeling a ton of pain, I actually started to calm down. This was familiar territory. From then on out, I knew what I was doing. I was a 4 when I got the epidural, but the pain was pretty intense. It turned out the reason why was because things went pretty fast after that. Elisabeth made her appearance about an hour and 20 minutes later. I have to say, getting out a small baby was soooo much easier than my past experiences! I couldn't believe how little effort and pain it took comparatively. Awesome! You would think I would get used to it, but I never do . . . one minute there was just a fat tummy, and then suddenly, there was a real baby, a little person! Once she was with us, all of the nervousness from earlier completely vanished. We were so happy. We marveled over how tiny and beautiful she was. She really looks like a girl.  I know this should be obvious, but I expected her face to look like my boys, you know, like a general baby-face. But she really looks like a precious little girl.

I have been trying to give her as many hugs and kisses and snuggles as possible. Having a new baby is overwhelming, but seeing tiny feet crossed or baby cheeks sleeping on little hands takes away so much of the stress. I love to just hold her and look at her, or rub my cheek against her soft little skin. I felt much yuckier initially than I did with the last couple of kids, but have generally felt better since coming home. I'm not going to lie and say that means I've felt good, but you know, there's that checklist of crud you get to go through before you feel "normal" again. 

The Name

So, you knew we weren't really going to name her Solarica. Right? Josh decided on Alicia as the middle name not too long ago, which is a pretty name, but actually a byproduct of a Diego phase. Gary and I always came to the hospital with a list of options in the past, and decided the name within a day. However this time, it turned out we hadn't done enough prep as a couple, and it actually took us a couple days after we came home from the hospital to decide. I always wondered how this could happen, but now I know. Enough exhaustion will do it every time. Gary has a grandmother named Elizabeth, and my grandmother's mother is Elizabeth. Also, both of us have about  a million Elizabeths in our family history. Gary said his grandma was pretty awesome. She was a teacher in St. George, and Jeffery R. Holland said that she was one of the best teachers he had. Elisabeth is the Dutch and German way of spelling it, and Gary has a lot of Dutch blood in him. We decided on Lissy as a nickname because it's cute but not overly common. We do want to call her Elisabeth, especially when she is older, but with a 4-syllable name she's going to be called something, so we thought we would be in charge of what it is. As much as possible. Yes, once again, it's in the Bible, but runners-up were not. We could just as easily have kids named Ryan, Cameron, Andrew, and Paige. (Yeah, Andrew was the only option there.) However, I do like that her name has a rich heritage of righteous women that have held it. Kae is Gary's mom's middle name. We really wanted to name our baby after her, and since Elisabeth is a long name, we thought Kae was perfect to go with it.

The Boys

How are the boys with her? They love her. They think she is so cute and constantly ask if they can hold her. She is going to be one lucky little girl. However, having life's routine completely disrupted and much less time with mom is hard for everyone. They've all had their moments in the last two weeks. Andrew has had the hardest time, and is doing his best to make us forget his previous life as a good-natured boy. Oh, well, though, it's one of the things that happens. (Going down the check-list . . .)  Experience tells me they will all be okay, and soon we will get a new routine and they will forget what life was like without a little sister.

So . . . we have a new baby. We have four kids. We have a little girl. So much to tell (for example, I left out the part about the Asian nurse who kept saying, "Oh, you very numb. So numb, legs like noodle"), but I've been telling for quite long enough now. How do I end a post with so much in my head and my heart . . . I guess just press publish then go kiss my baby.