Derek and Bryce

We had a blast this morning. Derek decided to run around as Superman and help all the little unhappy babies find their smile. The boys were so cute I just had to take pictures!

 Sweet little peeking baby!

 Baby burrito

He's not too fond of being barely swaddled. :)

Superman to the rescue!

I love Texas!

I'm totally proud of being an American, but I love the fact that I was born and raised in Texas. I love the open sky, the relatively mild winters (compared to Utah) and the awesome thunderstorms. Plus, the added bonus that rain doesn't taste like barely thawed battery acid here. Rain in Utah is ice cold and tastes disgusting. That's beside the point, though. We went out to Jeff and Tammy's apartment last night to hang out and let Bryce and Derek get some Giga/Papa time. It was so much fun!

He's such a big boy in his big boy booster seat! I thought it was so funny to see him falling alseep while still holding onto my cup. :)

Beautiful sunset in Prosper (left side of the car)

View out the right side of the car at the same time. Look at all that sky!!

Derek looooooves Papa's Truck. He's such a little boy!

Mr. Independent

Derek has gone off to Del Rio for almost a week! He's helping Tammy babysit Logan while Lanae adjusts to having two kids. Yay! Savanna was born yesterday and she's absolutely adorable!! As I write this, Derek has been gone almost three days. It's been a huge blessing to have time to catch up on sleep and spend time with Mitchell as well as Bryce, but I miss my little dude! I may or may not have shed some tears as I watched Tammy and Derek start off on the 8 hour trip out west. Blame it on the hormones. :) For some reason, I always end up making the biggest mess when packing for any trip. This time was no different and I've been cleaning pretty slowly the past few days. Today is the first super deep clean day, so I'm going to keep this post kind of short. 

I started getting Derek ready for the idea that he was going to see Logan about two weeks before he actually left. I think it helped him realize that a road trip was coming. The added bonus of riding with Giga (Tammy) was icing on the cake. Lol. Then I found a portable DVD player that had been marked down at Walmart and set Derek up with a few DVDs to take on the road. Turns out that has been a really smart purchase. Not only did it help keep him happy on the car ride, but Derek has been waking up at 5:30 am (thank you, Daylight Savings!), so Tammy just puts on a DVD for him and he stays quiet til Logan wakes up and then everybody can start their day. Hopefully he adjusts to the time change quickly. Here are the pictures from Monday. :)

 Finally! A picture of Giga and Bryce!

 Waiting for Giga to arrive. Such a handsome kid!

 How much junk can a kid need for a week?! This picture doesn't even include another duffle bag's worth of DVDs and unfamiliar toys to help keep the boys occupied and playing nicely. The wooden duck was a last minute stroke of genius. Logan will play with that thing for hours. :)

 Cheerfully waving and saying, "Bye, Mom!" Not a problem leaving Mom behind. :)

Blowing a kiss. He looks so big in the big boy booster seat!! I can't believe he's almost 3.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!! We had a great Halloween! Derek, Bryce and I walked down to get the mail and found a package waiting for the boys from Grandpa Bazemore. Bryce got this cute bib and Derek had foam stickers and light sticks. Boy, was he in heaven! Thanks Dad! 

He insisted on pulling out each and every sticker and scattering them liberally all over the living room. Not too hard to clean up, since Derek can't figure out how to get the backing off. :)

Derek wanted to "color" (cuddle) on his couch with Bryce

He sure loves to protect Bryce from my camera

What cute boys!

We had a last minute invite from my mom to go trick or treating in her tricked out neighborhood and it was so much fun! Unfortunately, the little tiger cub decided to eat right as Mitchell and my mom were taking Derek to go trick or treating, so I didn't get to see that part. :( My mom sent me a cute video of Derek blitzing from house to house. Once he figured out how trick or treating worked, he'd run to one door, get the candy and sprint off to the next door. It was so cute! Good thing I put on his light-up Lightning McQueen shoes, too. It got dark pretty fast but I'm sure it was hard to miss a 3 foot blue fuzzy monster dashing down the sidewalk, lol. I'm glad Derek had such a great experience. Kind of bummed that most of my pictures of Bryce are so orange, but he was such a cute tiger, I couldn't resist posting!

Rawr!

Such a cute little Tigger-baby! Derek should have been Winnie the Pooh, haha!

Trying on another Halloween outfit. This one will definitely be for next year - it's still pretty long on him. 

Squish!!

Helping Nana with some dysfunctional decorations. The witch on the right is Derek's favorite. When you hit her feet, she cackles. The skeleton hanging on the left next to Mom was scaring kids left and right. Loud noises (like noisy trick or treaters) make the eyes light up red and it shakes and screams. Hehehe...

Peacefully sleeping. :)

Nana and her little dude

Brothers!

We took some brother pictures this morning. Bryce was thoroughly awake and Derek was loving being so up close and personal with his brother. I'm kind of protective after the welcome-to-our-family noogie Derek gave Bryce in the hospital. Right on the fontanels! UGH! Don't get me wrong, Derek gets plenty of interaction with Bryce, just usually very supervised interaction... think helicopter parent. I'm sure I'll relax when Bryce gets a little older. Anyway, these two were having such a good time, I just couldn't miss out on the golden photo opportunity. Bryce really has more hair than it seems in these pictures - it's just filthy. I have to wash it every other day because Derek rubs his head every few minutes, I hold his head when I nurse him and Mitchell can fit Bryce's entire head in one palm, so his hair gets lots of mileage. :) 

 Bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8:30 in the morning!

 This face reminded me of a face Derek made that looks pretty similar...

...see? Lol!

 Such cute brothers!

 I love Bryce's little gas smile!

Derek is so entertained with Bryce's hiccups that he started hiccuping too!

This kid has such big feet! He's going to be tall for sure!

Lazy Like Sunday Morning

A little snapshot of our morning... :)

 "Nose"

 Protecting his brother from the camera flash. :)

 6 days old!

Relaxing in the parents' bed and checking out Dad

 Derek is fascinated with Bryce's little fingers

 Little brother domination! 

 Cuddle time with Daddy and Bryce

I love my boys!

How We Roll

This is how we (by we, I mean Derek) watch Tangled - naked on the couch eating Goldfish. Derek decided he wanted to go shirtless and pantless (thankfully I talked him out of going diaperless) today and eat Goldfish after breakfast while watching "Tangled." Sure, ok. It's 6:30 in the morning, you can have your way til 8. So, who needs to use your hands when you have two perfectly adequate thighs to hold your cup for you? ;) 

"Stinky Cheese" face

Better "Cheese"

His spontaneously new version of the "Fish face"

No photography please!

The Mothership Has Sent Us Another One...

We have another alien baby! Bryce has some jaundice and the pediatrician wants to head it off at the pass. Bryce gets a different bili-bed than Derek had. This one is more like a tanning booth - complete with goggles. :) I think he likes it. He sleeps well enough at night now that he's got his own personal heat lamp. It's not hot, but certainly warms the air in his immediate vicinity. He's doing great and will probably be off the bed no later than Monday - maybe even by tomorrow. He's already looking less orange-y and the whites of his eyes are becoming more white and less that sickly yellow color. That eye color combined with all the fine baby down on his back reminds me of Jim Carey's role in the Grinch movie. :) He's such a good baby though! He rarely cries unless he's dirty or hungry (he couldn't care less if he sat in pee all day though. Just like his brother), and he's really patient when I have to help him latch, latch, latch and re-latch for nursing. I feel so blessed to have such great kids! Yep, I can officially say "kids." How cool is that?! Anyway, here are a few pictures taken earlier today. :)

The bili-(tanning) bed. There is a UV paddle/wand that goes under his back, too, so he gets treatment on both sides of his body. 

Check out those hot goggles. Chicks dig him... legs (almost) crossed and all.

He was more alert than this makes him out to be. I just caught him as he was closing his eyes. :)

Bryce William Heath

He's finally here! After stops, starts, and several guesses, Bryce William Heath was born Monday, October 22 at 4:18 pm. He weighed a startling 8 lbs, 11 oz and was 20.5 inches long with lots of thick... blond?!...hair. Lots of surprises about this one. :) He has Mitchell's fingers and toes with huge basketball ready hands and looong skinny legs. No wonder I thought there were twins in there for a while. I'd feel his bum sticking out of the right side of my belly and his feet waaay back around my left side. We reported for the induction at 7:30 am and the pitocin was started about 8:30 am. I was so very nervous about this birth but my nurse, Chris, was fabulous! She just kept telling me I was doing beautifully and everything was going to be fine (my OB had taken the initiative and briefed her on my last birth experience before we arrived and directed her to reassure me that all would be well). Dr. MacDonald (my awesome OB) came in sometime between 8 and 8:30 to check me and break my water. At this point, I was expecting to be somewhere around 2 cm dilated if I followed my previous progression of about a half a cm a week. He was a little surprised as he told the nurse I was a good solid 3 cm and about 50% effaced. SCORE!!! The contractions (and walking up the stairs to Jeff and Tammy's apartment, lol) had finally worked!!

Me and all my ridiculously massive belly...39 weeks exactly

The traditional last-time-we-have-to-hug-bending-over picture :)

The nurse anesthetist came in around 9 to verify I was a good candidate for an epidural (I was, lol) and the anesthesiologist totally surprised us by coming in about a half hour later prepped and ready to go. I hadn't had much time to mentally prepare myself (or psych myself out, for that matter), so I was kind of in a daze as Chris sat me up and arranged me for the procedure. Mitchell opted to sit in a chair and watch since Chris was occupying me so well and he watched the whole thing in rather horrified fascination. I had to stop watching his facial expressions, haha! Within minutes after the epidural catheter was inserted and I was back on the bed, my feet and lower legs started to go numb. Success!! I think the dr was pretty tired of my broken record "thank you!" by the time he left. I had the perfect epidural - I could still move my legs around a bit and had about 5% sensation (I could feel pressure from cervical checks or feel Mitchell tuck the sheets around my legs) but I had absolutely no pain whatsoever. Chris told me to call her if I felt nauseated at all because the epidural might slow down my heart rate a little bit. I called her a few minutes later when I got light headed and my heart rate had a dropped a little. She said I was still in the normal range (just the low side of normal) but ordered some counter-acting drug anyway. The nurse anesthetist came in and things get a little fuzzy for the next couple minutes. I remember puking in a bag (which is really difficult when you're flat on your back) that looked like the shoulder-length gloves vets use to examine large farm animals and worrying that I got puke in my hair while the nurses were putting stuff in my IV and looking a little worried. Very suddenly, my head cleared and Chris was saying she was glad I called her in when I did because it could've gotten worse. I wasn't ever in any danger of coding or dying, but I sure felt like crap for about 5 minutes.

I didn't have any more problems til around 2 pm when progression had slowed down. I'd been at a 7 for about two hours. Chris had me switch to a hands and knees position (which I got into all by my numb-legged self!) and I rocked and swayed for about an hour trying to get Bryce to move lower and dilate my cervix more. After an hour, I had progressed to an 8! Woo!! Only two more centimeters to go! Fortunately, I was a 10 and ready to push within half an hour. Chris actually coached me to push until Bryce started crowning and then Dr. MacDonald came in a suited up in what seriously looked like a HAZMAT suit. I only pushed for 18 minutes and then Bryce popped out all in a rush. Dr. MacDonald suctioned his mouth and nose out a little bit and plopped him on my stomach. I was honestly just so shocked to see him out (and how HUGE he was!) that I just stared at him in disbelief until another nurse handed me a towel so I could help dry Bryce off. He was much "cheesier" than Derek was. I almost couldn't see his face for all the vernix covering him, but after a few minutes (and an enthusiastic nurse), his features began to emerge. The nurse took him over to a warmer as Dr. MacDonald started stitching me up. I had a stage 2 tear (not all that bad) and I actually got to watch him work this time (he was wearing a plastic face shield with reflective properties). I'm still totally amazed that all this happened with absolutely no pain whatsoever. I feel like I was able to focus and enjoy the process and be much MUCH more aware of what was going on around me. I can't wait to have another baby!! The recovery process has been much smoother and far more manageable than I ever thought possible. THIS is how childbirth should be (for me, anyway). I joked with the nurses after delivery and indicated I could have ten kids if this was how the rest of the deliveries went. Chris actually thought I was serious and repeated my statement to the next shift nurse who took over. I loved her look of shock. It always makes me laugh when I tell people I want five kids and they act like that's a huge family. So funny. :) Here are picture of Bryce from the first two days....

Such a sweet little pumpkin baby!

"Stop touching meeeeee! I KILL YOU!!!"

Hee... :)

The nurse who bathed him tried to get his hair in a mowhawk, but it's pretty wavy.

Hey baby, how you doin'?

Frog legs!

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

Meeting Nana, Papi and big brother Derek! (Jeff and Tammy came a little later but we forgot to take pictures :S)

Such a cute roly poly face!

Oh, the sun!

Dad, will you PLEASE get that thing out of my face?

Going home! Mitchell makes me laugh - he's sitting here saying, "Whoa! I don't know what happened in this picture, but you do NOT look that big." Haha! He cracks me up. :)