Our First Trip with Ayden

We have been thoroughly enjoying our time at home as a family. We have really tried to just stay in and cuddle and rest and play. But on Wednesday, we did a day trip to La Crosse! It was sort of a test for our family of five:) We've always done lots of trips with Kate and Collin and we were wondering what it would be like with Ayden too!

We headed out in the morning and had breakfast at a favorite place in Mauston. It did get a little hairy when Collin ended up between Kate and me in a huge corner booth. He started choking on bacon and since I was nursing Ayden, I couldn't really help him/get to him and Dave couldn't reach either. Lesson learned: Collin sits next to Daddy in restaurants. He has also just started refusing to sit in a high chair, at home and in restaurants:( I was not happy about this, but he has done better than I'd hoped at sitting at the table. 

Between potty breaks, hungry infants, toddlers done eating way before the rest of us, dropping crayons under the table and throwing fits, dirty diapers, we were almost convinced to go right back home. 

The kids did great on the ride and Dave dropped Kate, Ayden and I at a consignment kids store to get clothes for the kids while he took Collin to get his haircut. When they returned, we headed to the Children's Museum in downtown La Crosse (hung out for awhile in the van while Collin slept and Ayden ate - Kate did really well waiting)! What a fun place, I've been excited to go and we finally did it. At the end of our time at the museum, we were in the basement looking at the dinosaur stuff. There was a maze and Kate went in with Dave and went around a corner and she just screamed! There was a big dinosaur and she totally freaked out. It was funny to Dave and I and we were trying to not let her see us laughing! She refused to go back in the maze, I had to go "block" the dinosaur so she could get through to see what was beyond it:) 

After the museum, we went to TJ Maxx to get a step stool for Kate (a very pregnant Mommy may have sat on her plastic one and broke it a few weeks ago....) and then to Target before eating out at Texas Roadhouse. I kept telling Dave, let's go, let's go! We need to quit while we are ahead! That is a lesson I've learned. Don't keep pushing it until everyone is melting down. Call it a day when you can come out still smiling. :) But we actually did a LOT and ate in a restaurant twice! The kids did really well and it was a fun and relaxing meal. At one point, Kate said, "I don't want Collin to grow up. I want him to stay little like you want us to, Mom"

Here are some pics from the museum:

I think the fire engine was my favorite:)

This wall was SO cool

News desk

This was majorly cool too - they could arrange a bridge

Our little monsters. Distracted by trains...

Looking for fossils

We missed the rush at the restaurant (we love eating with the blue-hairs:) and got home right in time for bath and bed. I'm sure we'll have our fair share of total disasters, so Dave and I are relishing in this small victory:) If anyone wants to go to the museum with us sometime, or take our kids there:) - we'd love it!

Here are some pics from our walk this afternoon...first time around the circle with all the kids. Ayden was the best behaved:) 

Two Weeks Old!

Whoa! We are having a ton of fun lately, how do I know? Time is flying! Our sweet, new addition that seems like yesterday was still kicking me from the inside....is two weeks old! Well, around midnight tonight:) Will you be up to celebrate? We might be...

Here is a small update on life so far...

One of his preferred positions, head propped up on his hands

He is really a good baby. Obviously, he spends most of his time sleeping, eating or crying while getting his diaper changed. Some days he has a lot of awake time and usually he spends the evening looking around and checking us out. 

I love this little smirk

Hello

The kids have been holding him more and more, especially Collin. He will go nuts and run over to the chair and grab a blanket or the Boppy and say, "Hold, hold!" If you do not give him Ayden, he gets quite mad. 

Which brings me to a really big change for us lately....Collin is throwing much bigger fits than we've seen before. A lot of it is tied to food, he wants what he wants (sweets, treats and pouches) and he throws a fit if you won't let him have it. I don't know if it is just the fact that we have a newborn in the house, but dealing with/picking up an almost two year old when he is mad is SUPER hard. He has also rebelled against going to bed, but he has been sleeping fine, which is a blessing in the night! It is generally true that if you keep something in the bellies of our kids (and Dave and I, frankly!) they will be happy. We had an epic meltdown this morning at breakfast for Collin. He didn't want anything and just screamed. Once he calmed down and ate something, he was a silly, charming little boy who played wonderfully with his toys by himself for a long time. As with anything frustrating with kids, it is a phase, I know it will change. But uff da. 

Enjoying snuggle time with everyone these past two weeks...(watching Sleeping Beauty)

Ayden eats well and has since the beginning. Sometimes he will go long periods without eating (almost six hours!) and we've spent two days where I felt I fed him constantly all day long! He generally doesn't fall hard asleep while nursing (unlike Collin) but prefers to curl up on our chest afterwards and sleep. He will also tolerate/take a nap in the swing and that has bought me lots of time, I need that to continue or even improve!

In the swing

He will not sleep in the bassinet. This is my main concern. Almost every time we've put him down in the bassinet in our room, he wakes up immediately or fakes us out and will only sleep 15 minutes or so. ONCE, he took a 2.5 hour nap in there for me, which was wonderful. We will keep trying to get him to sleep in there. I have had him nurse in bed with me and then I move him safely away from anything and he sleeps well that way. He will do a long stint at night already and I am definitely soaking that up. Usually around 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. From 4 a.m. on it is a crapshoot, we either cluster feed until the kids are up or he may sleep on my chest while I sit out on the couch and watch the morning news/cuddle with an early riser (Collin). 

In my arms

I do have to say, this is my third child. I have no idea how Kate is already five. I am in no rush to put this newborn down. I know I should. I know he needs to sleep in the bassinet. I will work on it. But we will not get these times back with Ayden. Sleep on, my son, sleep on...

In Daddy's arms

Ayden has taken a bottle! The other two kids never really took a bottle well. Kate kind of took one since she was in daycare while we lived in Iowa but she never drank much. I think she made up for it while at home with me:) Collin struggled mightily with the bottle as well and I had no high hopes for this third babe. But since Ayden would take a paci in the hospital (another thing the others didn't do), Dave was itching to to try a bottle. I held him off until the other night when he promised me he would feed him in the middle of the night and let me sleep:) He took a few ounces from Dave (in an Avent Natural bottle, in case you were wondering) and we called it a mini-victory. Today while I went and picked Kate up from school, Dave tried again and he took a good three ounces very happily. We are thrilled and plan to keep it up so that we have more options as time goes on!

He makes a lot of crazy faces when he is sleeping, I just love it and am always trying to catch them on my phone. 

Ayden certainly looks like the other two kids, but I think mostly looks like Dave! He definitely has a Lenninger nose:) This magical time of having us ALL home is soon coming to an end and I think it has gone really well (I'm nervous for next week - Dave goes back to work and he is on call the whole weekend!) 

First bath at home

We bathed them all together upstairs that night

I love my role as the snuggler when he gets out:)

Our sweet Ayden

Ayden Walter is here!

He's here:)

As you might imagine, I have a lot to say about the last week of our lives! But I can't seem to find the time to write a post! So, you'll get a brief but important one. 

Dave worked a pretty full day on Friday (Jan 16), I was anxious and a little ornery that day, wanted baby to come and wanted Dave to come home:) We went out for Mexican that night and put the kids to bed and were both exhausted. I was going to take a warm bath and relax when my water broke, somewhat dramatically, at home in our bathroom (thank God!) around 8 p.m. We figured we still had plenty of time as I had no contractions, but they started as soon the water broke. Five minutes apart. 

We got to the hospital around 10 p.m. and the contractions just kept ramping up. OB was short-staffed but thankfully my doc was already in the hospital for an induction - yay! Mom and Dad arrived around 10:20 p.m. and Dad went home to watch the kiddos. Things moved quickly. They checked me and I was at 4 cm. I labored for about another hour and it was super intense. When they checked me again, I was at 9 c.m and they started scrambling to set up the room for baby! Kylie arrived just as I was getting ready to push. 

We asked if Kylie would be willing to take photos of the arrival of this babe. I would have never thought of it for the others and was a little scared of the prospect of pictures of a birth...but I also wanted to see if we could capture those special moments that are so fleeting and get missed with all the craziness that happens! She is also the godmother of baby, is a nursing student - she should get credit for it:) - and she is my sis! As you will see, she got some great pics and I am so happy with them. I can't believe that worked out so well, so awesome, thanks Kyles!

So....I pushed for about 20 minutes and at 11:42 p.m. Baby Boy Lenninger was here! He was pretty bruised and beat up from the quick arrival:) Apparently the cord had been around his neck but he had a long cord and she was able to just maneuver it over his head.My favorite moments in life include three times when a babe was put on my chest. The softest, warmest little bundles of pure joy in my arms. There is so much about that moment that just make it unreal and amazing.  The little bruiser weighed in at 8 lbs and 15 oz. and was 21 inches long. He was jaundiced as all our babies are, we had all the blood draws done and thankfully, he hasn't needed photo therapy like Collin had.

Praise God!

Our big boy

He has ridiculous feet and toes!

Another son!

There was some slight trouble with me afterwards. It took awhile for the doc to take care of things that docs take care of after baby arrives. I ended up having a post-partum hemorrhage and they had to give me multiple drugs to try and stop the bleeding. Those drugs then made me sick. They had me NPO  in the event that surgery was needed to stop the bleeding, so I couldn't eat! I needed an ultrasound Saturday morning to check my uterus and after they heard back from the specialists in Madison that it didn't look like there was anything requiring surgery, I was finally free to eat and relax a bit! 

SO happy he is here:)

So we had our baby boy! And that's exactly what they had to put on our wristbands and his record. We had a short list of names that we were not really excited about. Then two days before he was born Dave threw out a couple new ones that we liked. So, we were kind of deciding between those and I told everyone that I didn't want to be rushed. We tried calling him Holden for awhile. Then Dave went home to shower and grab some stuff and came back. He was leaning toward Hayden. The nurses kept laughing at us. We just couldn't pull the trigger on anything. When we were circling around Hayden, Dave nonchalantly threw out Ayden and I had that gut feeling. I liked it (it had been on my lists for previous kiddos, but Dave was never quite on board) and thought it went well with our middle name and the other kids' names. So, we finally decided on Ayden!!! Woo hoo!! And then someone asked us how to spell it. Crap. There are a lot of ways to spell Ayden and we couldn't decide. So, back to Baby Boy Lenninger for awhile. I kept writing out different versions and Dave liked Aiden and I liked Aidan. I wrote out one version with a "y" and so we went with that one:) Good grief. 

Waiting for a name...

One of the jaundice tests

Kate was very interested in everything they did for Ayden and Mommy.
 She got to listen to Ayden's heartbeat, Collin wanted to ride on the bassinet cart:)

He seems like an Ayden:) He looks like David and Kate, has a loud cry but only hates getting diapers and clothes changed, likes to be held (in fact, won't sleep anywhere else at night), likes the swing enough to make it useful during the day, makes a lot of faces while sleeping, has very dark eyes (color to be determined!) tolerates his sister holding him pretty well, is a great eater, is wearing Collin's clothes (has had one new outfit of his own) and fits into some of Collin's newborn, but mostly 3 month clothes right now. He rides in the car seat really well so far (had to bring him in for two blood draws to watch his jaundice). He has long fingers and fingernails and gave himself a nice big scratch on his cheek right away:( I have tried cutting his nails, did five before I nicked his pinky! and keep him in mittens for now.

He has a name:)

He likes to hold his paci in himself:)

They wanted to observe me a little longer for the bleeding and actually wanted to watch Ayden longer as well (turns out I was positive for Group B Strep, but we didn't get enough time for the antibiotics) so we had a total of three nights in the hospital and came home mid-day on Monday, January 19. So, a little scary there at moments but all's well that ends well! I think my recovery is going very well since we've been home.

Kate and Collin love him very much and like to help, though I will say, they are not overly concerned with him yet. Kate is very proud and has colored a million pieces of art with Ayden's name on it:) Collin likes Ayden and has to put his hands on his tummy or tap his head. He seems protective of him. But Collin does seem like he has entered "terrible twos" territory. I'm not sure if it is all the change in the house or what, but he throws fits for things he never did before. And of course he feels like a giant to us now, so handling the crying, flailing 23 month old is hard! He is either fussy or completely goofy and sweet and plays with his toys nicely. So...we'll see how this all continues and how Mommy handles it alone! 

Coming in to meet their brother!

Whoa, what just happened?! 

Welcome home signs from the kids...

Dutifully watching over her brother - "babysitting"

We are so in love. Despite any moments of stress or fussing kids or extreme loudness, Dave and I are smiling at each other, telling each other how amazing our kids are (well, most of the time!). We fully appreciate how fast time will fly and that Ayden will soon be growing and growing and no longer a newborn - we are just soaking up all this time together at this moment. Welcome to our crazy world, your new family Ayden Walter!

Our family of five

More pictures to come, I'm trying to gather them all in one place! Oh, of course, when we arrived home, my laptop (the only one we really use) was giving us lots of problems. Dave ended up taking Collin to LaCrosse one day to take it to Best Buy and after some days without a laptop, we are back in business with a new one!