Maternity Leave

(The pictures accompanying this post are from when Tyler was 1 week, 2.5 weeks, and one month old.  I was about to write that they have no connection to what I'm writing about in this post, until I realized that they are exactly what I'm writing about.  They freeze some of the precious moments that I had with my boys while I was home!)

 

I am back at work this week after an amazing 7 weeks of Maternity Leave.  I have mixed feelings about being back, but there is no other option, so I'll just get used to it again! I can honestly say that this 7 week block was one of the most enjoyable in my life.  As if the experience of finally meeting Tyler and adding him to our family wasn't wonderful enough on it's own, being home with Timmy and Tyler, doing whatever we wanted to each day, whether it was snuggling and sleeping til noon or spending 3.5 straight hours at a playground, was awesome.  There was just a feeling of freedom and peace having all of my time for my family.  I guess that makes perfect sense because in my normal life I spend more waking hours staring at this computer screen then I get to spend with them.

 

During my leave there was lots of visiting.  My Grandma was in town right after Tyler was born, so she and Mom came over every day until I was mobile.  Becky got home for the summer just days after Tyler was born, and she almost lived with us while I was home!  She was such a huge help and so enjoyable to have around!  She is going to be the most amazing mom when it's her turn!  Friends that I haven't seen in awhile, some of them in years, made time to get together with us.  We also spent lots of time at my parents house with my family.  We spent lots of weekend time with Tim's parents and siblings.  And we made a trip up to Ohio for a party (which I will post about separately) and so my extended family could meet Tyler.  It had been a year and a half since I had been to Ohio so it was especially great to see everyone there.

The maternity leave flew by.  Some days seemed to last forever and some there weren't enough hours in.  We spent time at Elena's at the pool, went to activities at Timmy's school, took the boys to two festivals that we were selling shave ice at, took hundreds of pictures, and spent quality time together.  I did some shopping, planned parties, made some crafty things, caught up with old friends in person and on the phone, and relaxed.

 

 

I don't know that I would want to be a 100% stay at home mom.  Tim might expect me to start cooking.  I really wish I could just work part time though, even one less day a week would be a huge improvement!  I have already told Tim that we have to have one more child eventually, just so I can have another 7 weeks off of work!  You get to keep the child afterwards, so it's totally worth it!  ;)  Maybe I should go find something billable to do now...

THREE YEARS OLD!

Timmy turned three last weekend and we spent the last weekend of my maternity leave celebrating him!  Tim took his actual birthday off on Friday so we could take him to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.  Timmy has a recent interest in fish after winning himself a goldfish at our neighborhood festival a few weekends ago by throwing a ping pong ball into a cup with the fish.  Our goldfish's name is Nemo, and he now lives in a very nice tank on our counter, with 6 or so other fish, and Freddie the Frog!  Timmy loves watching them swim around and feeding them, so it was the perfect time to take him to the Aquarium.

Timmy had snuck into our bed about 6 in the morning on his birthday.  Later, when we were all waking up he was kind of grumpy, but quickly got into a good mood when we told him it was finally his birthday.  Tim told him, "Yep, three years ago today you came out of Mommy's belly!"  Timmy looked at Tim like he was either crazy or an idiot, and started to laugh at him saying, "Nooo!"  Tim found that hysterical, which made Timmy think it was hysterical, and we all laughed for about 5 minutes while we convinced him that he really did start out just like Tyler!

Once we got out of the house we made a quick stop at Dunkin' Donuts and dropped Tyler off at my mom's before heading to Baltimore.  Timmy liked the aquarium as much as we were hoping he would!  There is a huge tank with sting rays, little sharks, and a sea turtle that you can watch from above, and I think he would have stayed there all day if we had let him.  He absolutely loved the dolphin show, and said they were his favorite thing every time we asked.  He spent just the right amount of time looking at each little tank before saying he was ready to see what was in the next one.  He liked watching the sharks too, but you could tell that they made him just a little bit nervous.

 

That evening Grammy, PawPaw and Aunt Becky came over for dinner and birthday cupcakes.  Timmy said that it was a great birthday.

Timmy's birthday party started Saturday afternoon.  This year the crowd was different; we still had a lot of family there, but we didn't invite most of our friends without kids, as Timmy had friends of his own to invite, and his celebrations are definitely turning into kid parties!  He had a complete blast!  When he saw Tim start setting up his moon bounce and water slide he lost it, running up to me shrieking that he needed his shoes so he could go outside.  As soon as they turned the water on he got in, in his clothes, and they had to send him back in to me for his swimsuit and sunscreen!  When his friends started arriving they seemed to be just as excited to hurry up and get down the waterslide.  They looked like they were running a relay race!  As soon as one boy got down the slide, the next was ready, and the previous was already running around to the ladder or climbing back up!

 

 

The only way to get the boys out of the pool was for cake!  Timmy seemed to enjoy everyone singing to him this year, last year it embarrassed him.  I had tried to sing to him in the morning and he had told me to wait for cake, so he knew it was coming I guess!

 

After cake he opened up all of his presents, and he got great gifts!  The party pretty much wrapped up from there.  Tim and I spent the rest of the evening trying not to move from the couch, but we opened and set up all of Timmy's new toys one at a time as he brought them over to us.  It was a great weekend of celebrating our big boy!

Preschool - Catching Up

This post is very late, but I definitely wanted to write about Timmy's first year of Preschool because he got SO much out of it!  The most obvious change was with his communication.  When Timmy started preschool in November, he probably had around 20 words.  When the school year ended, he used the word 'chrysalis' while describing the lifecycle of a butterfly to us!  It has been wild watching him grow this year, in all aspects!

He really enjoyed school too, there were only a handful of days throughout the year where he would say that he didn't want to go to school in the morning, and by the time he got there he was excited for it.  He learned how to participate and follow directions.

He learned a little bit about self soothing and calming down when he was upset, and how to communicate feeling that something wasn't fair.  He learned how to make friends and still brings them up in conversation a month into the summer.

He leanred to wash his hands very well.  He learned to say blessing before eating his snack and a little bit about Jesus.  He loved his teachers and they loved him too, every afternoon they would tell whoever was picking him up what a sweet boy he is. 

For the last day of school his teachers organized to have parents come in early and walk with the kids to an open field where they could run around as just their class, instead of being on the playground with several other classes.  The kids were so cute walking together holding their circles!  They had a blast chasing each other, and one dad, around and playing.  I was definitely sadder on the last day of school then his first!  I'm so glad he'll get to go to the same school again next year!

 

 

35.5 Months and 1 Month!

Well, my boys are keeping me very busy!  We have settled into a pretty nice routine, half way through my maternity leave, and we are finding fun things to do with ourselves every day.  I have not gotten the courage to try to take both of them somewhere on my own though, so I am very thankful that Baba, Aunt Becky, and Uncle Joe are around during the day to do stuff with us!  We have been to playgroups, shopping, the pool at Grammy's, and even a festival in the last few weeks, and I am looking forward to doing more of that, plus a trip to Ohio in the next three weeks before I go back to work.

The first 2-3 weeks with Tyler home were pretty trying, and very tiring though!  He is still exclusively nursing and that really took all of my determination and lots of encouragement from friends to keep up with, it hurts at first!  It also made me feel a little helpless, because no one could help me feed him, I am pretty good at asking for help when I need it, but I was on my own with this!  Thankfully, we seem to have it down now, and I am very glad that we stuck with it.  Losing all of my baby weight before he was even three weeks old helped me along too!  ;)  I am happy to say that all of the maternity clothes are already put away, I had to force myself out of my maternity jeans when Timmy turned 3 months old!  Tyler is still wanting to eat every 3 hours on average, I am looking forward to that stretching out a bit as he gets older!

The strain of nursing is the ONLY complaint I have about having a newborn again.  Tyler is an incredibly content and easy baby.  We have been greatly blessed for the second time!  As long as he is not hungry, he is happy!  At night he goes immediately back to sleep after eating.  And he is quite cuddly!  He is a wiggle-worm, which I could have guessed from how active he was in my belly!  He's always kicking his legs and flapping his arms around.  He makes lots of squeaky noises too, we have decided he sounds like something between a chipmunk and a dolphin!  :)

Timmy is a wonderful big brother and is really enjoying his new role!  He looks for ways to help and he talks to him all the time.  He likes to tell him, "You're such a wiggle worm Tyler!" and sometimes he just calls him Ty, which we haven't done so I found it interesting that he gave him a nickname on his own.  He loved helping give him his first bath too, and Tyler seems to enjoy baths, which baby Timmy did not!

PS~ It only took me a full week to write this post ;)

Introducing Tyler Edward

Tyler Edward Jones was born on Tuesday, May 3rd at 7:49 A.M. exactly as scheduled!  He was 21" long (just like his big brother) and 8 lbs 3 oz (I guessed 8 lbs 2 oz!)  And he is absolutely perfect!

Tyler is as cute as can be and definitely resembles Timmy.  Here are pictures of each of them at birth, see for yourself!  (Timmy, then Tyler)

I insisted on being the one to announce Tyler's name, which meant that all of his grandparents had to hang out in the waiting room for about an hour and a half while I was in recovery.  Tim went back and forth from waiting to recovery and said that I was driving them all crazy.  I think it was perfectly fitting since they were getting to see my baby and I wasn't!

When it was finally time for me to move up to my room, Tim was with me, and we ran into my mom and Timmy in the hallway, who were taking a walk.  Timmy didn't seem too phased by my being wheeled around in a bed, and the first thing he said to me was, "Mama! The baby not in your belly anymore!" So, apparently he did understand what was going on!  They brought Tyler to us and Tim and I had a few moments with just him before letting everyone else come in.  Timmy climbed right up onto the bed with me and Tyler, and he gently touched his cheek and gave him kisses.  Timmy is definitely in love!  When everyone had filed into the room I finally said, "So... this is Tyler Edward."  Everyone seemed to like the name, and it turned out that Timmy had said it a couple times in the waiting room, so a few people had picked up on it.  Dad didn't say anything, but he did tear up a little, Edward was my PopPop's name, and it's my brother's middle name.

The rest of the stay in the hospital was a bit of a whirlwind.  The first night was a bit rough as Tyler was awake for most of it, finally Tim just stayed up with him for a few hours, walking and rocking him while I slept, then after I fed him the next time, I just let him stay on my chest for a few hours and he was happy, so Tim slept.  We had lots of time to nap during the day with him so we survived.  Mom brought Timmy every day and he and Tim would go do something fun while Mom visited with me.  We noticed some hospitality upgrades at the hospital since our stay when Timmy was born.  One day they brought us a special dinner menu and Tim got to eat with me.  When they brought the food up it came on a table with a white table cloth and extra chairs!  You could also have your babies first portraits taken, but we skipped that.  On check out day I got a complimentary massage!  They were appreciated additions!

Tyler is a sweet little guy and very easy going.  He is also very good at nursing, he ate while we were still in the operating room!  This was a huge relief to me as it was a goal to do better with it then I did the first time around.  Tyler sleeps a lot, has a very strong neck, hates getting his diaper changed, and has posed for hundreds of pictures.  I am so looking forward to learning more and more about him!

The experience of having a scheduled C-Section was wild.  I thought that I would know more of what to expect since I went through it before, but it was really different.  While everything was clearly organized and professional, I felt like there were a billion things going on at once, and that it was very hectic.  Of course with my first one, I had already been in labor almost 24 hours and had been drugged for most of them, so I was really just more aware of what was going on this time around.  Same goes for the spinal block and epidural, I was much more aware, and it was not comfortable!  One neat thing was that the same hospital doctor that assisted with Timmy's delivery also helped with Tyler's!  When I realized it was him, thanks to his connection to Radford and VT, he even went and changed his scrub hat for me, to the VT one he wore during Timmy's birth!  Everything went smoothly, though my doctor confirmed it was a very good thing that I went for the repeat c-section instead of a vbac, because it turns out that part of my uterus was very, very thin.  She said for a 3rd child I need to have 'a petite little girl' and that they would do the c-section at 38 weeks!  I was not nearly as exhausted this time as I was after Timmy's birth.  That made the wait in recovery seem even longer!  But finally getting to hold Tyler made all of the annoying parts of pregnancy and the following painful days of recovery all melt away immediately.  Now we'll see how we do at home!