Avery turns THREE

THIS guy turned THREE yesterday...WHAT!?!?!?!? Where has the time gone. When I look at him now compared to Joanna he seems gigantic...*sniff*. This NOT so little man is full of life and energy, loves to laugh and is pretty much non stop the entire day. He is learning more every day and never ceases to amaze me with the phrases he comes up with. He has had an exciting month with Joanna being born, family visiting, and now his birthday...whew. 

Family visits

We are SO SO thankful for FAMILY! My parents made it up a couple hours after Joanna was born and were able to stay for a week, what a blessing! Avery has been so excited with all the family up to visit and it has been so helpful to have family during this time. Zac's dad and brother are here right now and will be here for about 9 days! 

A little Avery love

 

This handsome Littleman is going to turn 3 in one week...WHAT! I had to give him a little attention since Joanna has been taking up most of the camera time. He has done surprisingly well transitioning with a new baby. For the most part he doesn't pay her much attention, but occasionally we will find him giving her quite the ride in the bouncer as he is trying to be "helpful" and rock her to sleep. So we have learned not to put her down without someone constantly keeping an eye on Avery. So far we haven't gotten that sweet picture of brother and sister cause Avery won't sit still long enough to snap one. Hopefully that will show 

up in the near future. For now here are a few shots of Avery getting some attention the past few days from Nana, Ranger, and Daddy.

Joanna Cait Arrives

The picture above was taken on 4/8/14 and early the next morning 4/9/14 at 2:59am Joanna Cait Lail was born at the Alaska Family Health and Birth Center. Joanna made a quick entrance into this world. Zac and I had been reading Supernatural Childbirth by Jackie Mize and were praying and believing for a quick, easy, and pain free delivery. I got everything but the pain free part ;) but even that was short lived and WAY more tolerable then Avery's delivery. 

I started having contractions around 10:30pm on Tuesday night that were about 10-12 mins apart. No big deal, we thought surely she would wait until the next day since my parents were flying in from NC at 7am in the morning. WELL my contractions quickly progressed from 10 mins apart, to 5 mins, to 2 mins, to 1 1/2 mins apart. At 12:30am we starting scrambling and decided we had better call someone to come over to be with Avery or else we were gonna have this baby at home. We finally got a hold of a friend around 1am. After getting pulled over and telling the cop "I have got to GO, my friend is having a baby" he let her go and she made it to our house about 1:30am. Zac and I were already in the car and we pulled out as soon as we saw her headlights. We arrived at the birth center about 1:50am, and I asked them to start running the water in the birthing tub and to check to see how dilated I was. I was 8cm and fully effaced...she was coming soon. We turned on some worship music, and I got in the tub while Zac did an amazing job of massaging my back during contractions. At about 2:50am I got up to go to the bath room and my water broke and my body decided to push. I told Zac to go get the mid-wife because I could feel her head. They directed me back to the tub, I gave 3 or 4 pushes and there was my sweet baby girl in my arms at 2:59am. I have to say water birth is the way to go in my book!

Zac was really concerned about leaving Avery so we asked when the soonest we could leave was and they looked at us kinda strange and said they needed to keep us a minimum of 3 hours. So at 6am we pulled out of the birth center, stopped and got breakfast and were back home at 6:30am to tell Avey good morning :) Our friend was a little shocked to see us walk back in the door that early but we were glad to be home!

Here are a few sweet pictures of Joanna's first few days of life