Beckah's Stats...

Beckah's 2 week appointment was today! She was 8lbs 1oz and 21.5 inches long! Looks like we have another Cadence on our hands! :o)

Beckah is here!

I went in for induction on March 4th at 5:30am. We didn't actually get the ball rolling until 9:15am (yeah...I was very bored seeing as there isn't much on TV that early in the morning). My Dr wanted to be there for pretty much every stage (which I thought was awesome!). This was by far my easiest birth. My nurses were wonderful and my doctors were awesome. Yes I said doctors! lol It's a smaller area out here so there wasn't that many women delivering. My doctor is a resident (so still in training) and her attending was with us to keep an eye on everything. There was also another doctor there to observe and lend a hand (she had asked me if it was okay for her to hang out). There was a nurse for Beckah and a nurse for me and of course Brady was there. I had a really good time. I feel a bit silly saying that, but it's true! Once I was complete it was only three sets of pushing and Beckah was here!

Beckah was born on 3/4/2011 at 2:33pm weighing 6lbs 13ozs and was 19.5 inches long. She screamed her lungs out when she was born and has barely cried since. She is very sweet, an excellent eater and sleeps well (hope that lasts!).

I think she looks like Cadence did when she was born. Her eyes are a dark blue though instead of light. Dark wavy hair, but her eye lashes and eye brows are white blonde so I think her hair will lighten up.

Her sisters love her so much! Especially Cadence. She holds her every chance she can get and is always wanting to help. Rory likes to kiss on her and rub her head. :o)

We are so happy to add her to our bunch and can't wait to see how her little personality fits in with the rest of us!

Cady's First lost tooth...

Today started off a little crazy but the best news of the day was happened at breakfast. Cadence lost her first tooth!! She is super excited to put it under her pillow tonight and see what the tooth fairy brings!

Today was nutty. It started with my taking Brady to to work so that I could have the car for various appointments today. Half way to work the check engine light comes on and the car starts shaking. Not cool. All kinds of crazy thoughts go through my head at this point. We had a very busy day planned and it was looking like our only car was going to mess that up. So I said a quick prayer that I would be able to handle whatever needed to happen. When I got home I explained the situation to my mother-in-law (who is visiting to help with the girls when the baby comes). She was planning on picking up her rental car in the afternoon and called to see if we could get it early. Nope. All booked up. So I called and found a rental car and we pack the kids up and headed out. When I arrived the nice guy at the counter asked me why I only needed it for the day. I explained the situation and he took pity on me. He gave me an awesome deal on the car for the day and wished me luck. We got our car to our repair man and explain what is going on. He said he would do his best to have it back to us tonight since we will be going in for induction and it would be good to have our car.

We head back home to drop off Grandma Suzi and Cady only to find that I had a serious blonde moment and left both my house key and the garage door opener at the car repair shop. Oops. Rory has an appointment with an allergist that we can't miss so Grandma and Cady will have to come with. We get to the appointment just in time and Grandma and Cady decided to head to the near by shopping center and browse while Rory and I see the Dr.

The Dr is wonderful. Takes in our whole history and then asks a bunch of questions and then does a simple reaction test on Rory's back. Tested for skin reactions to common indoor/outdoor stuff and basic foods...including the soy we have been avoiding. Fifteen minutes go by and Rory has NO REACTION TO ANYTHING. Huh?? Dr comes back in and says he thinks he knows what she has (I can't remember what he said it was called...very long complicated name and I forgot to write it down). He decides that we should continue to avoid Soy and to now avoid all milk products as well. I'm thinking, "Excellent, my life wasn't complicated enough lets just add taking away some of Rory's very favorite things!" lol. He also has her on Singulair. We are to do all this for a month and then come back. Meanwhile the Dr will get copies of everything her drs have done to date (all labs/scope results) as well has has me digging up a complete height/weight timeline for Rory so he can see her growth progress since birth. Once he knows what all the other Drs have done he may or may not order more blood work and do some other tests.

Once the appointment is over we pick up some lunch and then stop by the repair shop for keys and the garage door opener. I had a few minutes to eat and then headed out to my OB appointment. Everything is good, baby is fine and my induction is scheduled for 5:30 am tomorrow.

I then pop over to the pharmacy on base to fill Rory's script. I wait and wait and wait...only to find out that their printers are down and it will be at least an hour and a half before they can get them fixed. I head home to pick up Suzi and the girls to get Suzi's rental car. Switch car seats to her car and then take mine back. Next we are off to pick up our car. Had to replace the starter coil (thankfully not very expensive). I'm happy that our 12 year old car has lived to drive us around some more.

I then headed over to pick Brady up from work and stopped by the pharmacy again. They had the script ready and we headed home to make some tacos. Yum. Suzi and I then headed to Walmart for some milk that isn't milk and butter that isn't milk. lol We ended up with Coconut Milk and a soy free/milk free butter that I am excited about. I can now make several of Rory's favorite foods possible with the help of these products.

To round off our night Cadence's other loose bottom tooth decided it was going to come out too. It was a bit more traumatic and bloody which freaked Cady out pretty good. After a blessing from Dad she calmed down enough to appreciate that the tooth fairy was leaving two surprises! lol

Today has been one big blessing to me. No really! We were able to get everything done that needed doing. When the day started I honestly didn't think it would be possible. I know that the Lord only gives us what we can handle. Most of the time I feel that he has grossly over estimated my ability to cope, but today he once again proved me wrong. I am always thankful for opportunities to grow and today was one serious growing opportunity. Next time He throws me a curve ball I hope he can give me a couple of days to regroup...instead of my next big curve ball being the next day! lol

I am now getting ready to get some much needed sleep before waking up early and heading to the hospital to welcome our third little girl into our family. I am very excited and nervous but I am so ready for her to be in my arms. I will be posting about Beckah and her birth as soon as I can. Those of you who follow on facebook can find updates there as well. :o) Happy Friday!

.....

We are still alive. My computer died, but was thankfully revived so I will update soon. We are scheduled for induction on the 3rd or 4th (depending on the hospital availability). :o)

Christmas 2010

Oh Christmas. I surprised myself this year by getting all my shopping done by December 5th. I know, it was seriously some kind of miracle. So other than the stress of getting everything mailed to family on time, our December was pretty low key. We got to enjoy a quiet Christmas at home this year. I am honestly thinking that this is the only way to go. While I missed the mass of family that we have always seen on or around Christmas, there is something to be said for being at home with no where we "had" to be.

We started with our Christmas Eve tradition of opening one gift. My parents let us do this growing up and I loved it. My girls do too! lol

Rory was super excited to have her "own" barbie. It was her very first one. She slept with it that night. Cadence took off to play with her Rapunzel doll in the Barbie castle she got last Christmas which is why I don't have other pictures of her on Christmas Eve. It was tough to get the kids to go to bed that night. Even though we don't really make a big deal out of Santa they were still super excited for Christmas to come. After three stories they finally chilled out enough to let us tuck them in.

I then stuffed stockings and put out everything else for the next morning. Here is what our living room looked like Christmas Eve...

Grandma Suzi sent these adorable angel ornaments for the girls. Cadence wanted to keep her's "safe" and wouldn't put it on the tree till the next day.

Christmas morning "dawned" nice and cloudy. And by cloudy, I mean at 9 am it was still pretty dark in the house! The girls were up at 8am like normal and the opening chaos began. Here are a few pictures of them making a paper mess...

What the floor looked like at the half way mark. We had to stop and clean up paper and then opening could resume! lol

It was an awesome morning. The girls got so many wonderful gifts! They were super spoiled despite being miles from our family this year. We had waffles and took our time getting ready for the day. We spent the evening at the Bowen's house, where we had an amazing Turkey and Ham dinner. The kids played with some friends and their new toys, watched movies, and Brady and I got to chat, laugh and play one amazingly long, and super hilarious game of Uno with friends. It will definitely go down as one of the best Christmas' I have ever had!

Brady had most of the week off after Christmas and so we had a lazy week. Monday was a rough day for me pregnancy wise. Lots of pressure and discomfort all day. I was prepared to go to the hospital for them to check me when it finally started to go away after dinner. I had a Drs appointment on Wednesday, where they checked me to make sure everything was alright. I was dilated to a one, but still "thick" (or not effacing). All this is perfectly normal considering this is my third baby and I am now entering the home stretch. I have been having braxton hicks often, but everything else has been pretty normal since then.

Our best news is to do with Rory. At my appointment on Wednesday I popped her up on the scale when I was done just to see if any of the dietary changes we have made are working. She was 25.6 pounds!!!! Keep in mind that she gained only 2 pounds between her 1st and 2nd birthdays. On November 12, when she had her scope, she weighed 22.4 pounds. Putting on 3 pounds in almost two months is AMAZING!! I was so excited to see that number on the scale! The changes we have made for Rory have been simple, but a little complicated. She gets a benefiber supplement twice a day. We have switched her to a high fiber/low sugar diet. We are avoiding as many "fake" sugars as possible and sticking with those sugars found in nature. We have seen a pretty big difference in her stools in the last month. Her diarrhea has gone from daily to every few days with solid stools being a much more common occurrence.

We have also taken her off of soy products completely. We noticed after lunch one day that Rory had a rash on her face from the ranch she had with her chicken. I took a look at the ingredients and Soy bean oil was the very first ingredient. She had the reaction a few more times after that and so I decided to take soy out of the equation. This has been pretty difficult. Soy is in SO many things. I have resorted to making almost everything from scratch. It takes much more time, but Rory's stools got even better and she has cut WAY back on how much she eats. At first I was worried about that, but after seeing the change on the scale I feel that we have found our culprit in Rory's health/weight issues.

That is pretty much all that has been happening for us as 2010 comes to an end! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and a Happy and safe New Year!

The baby naming game...

It's funny, but I can't tell you how many people seem to think that Brady and I would have no trouble naming this little girl. It's our third girl after all. We must just be ROLLING in extra girl names at this point right?

Naming Cadence was easy. It had been my favorite name for many years. I got lucky and Brady liked it from day one and so we were set when we found out she was a girl.

Naming Rory was insanity! We went round and round and round with no names we both liked. I was going crazy, Cadence was calling her Violet, and Brady kept coming up with names that I felt were just awful. FINALLY a whole MONTH before Rory made her grand entrance into the world we agreed on her name. Cutting it a bit close, but we did finally get her named. Thankfully she came out looking like a Rory, or we would have been in trouble.

Now we are on girl number three. Honestly, had this baby been a boy we would have had just as much work to do. We had some ideas for a boy, but Brady and I haven't ever been in agreement on those either. With a girl though, we were starting completely from scratch. We had nothing. No ideas, and for the first few weeks after we found out she was a she we both just let it sit. Finally I pulled out the 100,000 plus baby name book and started with "A." I went through EVERY SINGLE NAME. Seriously. Took me over a week. I wrote down any name that I liked with no other considerations. When I was done I had a list of a little over 50 names. I handed that list over to Brady and told him to just go through and cross of anything he didn't like. When he was done we still had 25 names! Oy.

So we let it sit. After a week or so Brady decided we should get rid of all the R and C names to cut the list down (since we already have kids with C and R names). That cut it down a bit but not by much since there actually weren't any R names on the list. Next was anything that rhymed or was to "matchy" with the girls names. Nice. We still had 15 or so names...

Again we let it sit. I got back in gear after another week and put our last name with everything on the list. Should have done that sooner! lol The list went down by half once we got rid of the ones that just plain sounded wrong all together. At that point I felt we were down to a manageable list (eight names). We liked all of them and they went well with our last name. However I kept coming back to one name over and over. Oddly enough it wasn't my "favorite." Heck it wasn't even in my top four, but I kept coming back to it over and over. I would peek at the list and my eyes would just be drawn to it. It was actually starting to irritate me. I decided to give it more time and see if Brady came up with any he liked best.

Then Brady came home from work one day last week and told me that he had looked over the names again and that he liked a certain one best over the others. Can you guess what name it was?? Yep. The one I had been drawn too for no apparent reason at all. I laughed when he told me.

I can't describe the feeling really. The name just...fits. Almost like it was her name already and we were just now figuring it out, and to make the whole thing weirder whenever I say it out loud she kicks me.

So...long story all to tell everyone that our third little girl has a name!! And almost a whole THREE MONTHS before she is due. I mentioned it to my mom and the first thing she said was, "Wow. Thats early!" :o) I was surprised too Mom.

Lantz girl number three will be named...

We realize that we know a few Rebecca/Rebekah's. I can only think of one that actually goes by Becca. Oddly enough it doesn't bother me. You Rebecca/Rebekah's that we do know are awesome enough to think it was cool! :o) Added bonus is Cady loves it, and it sounds SOOOO stinking cute when Rory says it in her sweet little 2 year old voice.

We do have a back up name, just in case. I'm keeping that one under wraps because I am 100% sure that when we have this girl in our arms she will be Beckah. Still, it never hurts to be prepared!

We hope everyone is having an awesome Holiday season!

What things are like around here...

Yeah...that about sums it up!