Eternity is a long time... are you ready?

I have felt a pretty big nudge from God recently to write this. There has been news about a lot of death lately, and some very close family and friends have been affected. It has me wondering and asking myself what some of my closest friends and family members believe when it comes to faith. I know that all of my immediate family and many of my close friends are believers and have been saved, because we openly talk about it... but there are also those I'm not sure where they stand. So here it goes.

Any of us could die at any moment. We see it happen all the time... car accidents, cancer, heart attacks, a random shooting in a theater.... people die, and many times it is totally unexpected. If you were to die today, do you know where you will go? Where you will spend eternity? God loves us all so much, that he sent his one and only son to die for us to take away our sins so that we could spend eternity in Heaven with him. A place so majestic and incredible that we cannot even image. He did this because HE LOVES US. More than we could ever know. All we have to do is accept that love and ask Jesus to enter our hearts and save us from hell. We all deserve to go to hell. Yes, I know that is bold and scary, but its true. We all are sinners and fall short. I will be the first one to admit that I have made plenty of mistakes and I sin often. I also ask for forgiveness all the time and ask God to help me live the way he wants me to live.

God gives us this totally free gift of salvation. All we have to do is accept it. I pray that ALL of my friends accept this gift, because I want to see you all in Heaven some day :) It just breaks my heart when I hear of someone who died and not knowing if they were a Christian or not. When I say Christian, I mean someone who has accepted the Lord as their personal savior. I hear so much about "religion" and it being about a list of do's and do not's... That is not what it's about. That is what turns many people off to the idea of being a Christian.

The bottom line... GOD LOVES YOU. He has offered you a free gift of eternal life in heaven. I pray that everyone reading this will search their hearts and accept him before it is too late. If you already have, that is wonderful and I am so glad :) I hope I didn't offend anyone here or lose any friends... I have just felt God asking me to do this for awhile now. I'll say it here one last time- God loves you, and so do I! I am praying for you all :)

Claire: 4 Months

Our beautiful baby girl is 4 months old already! She is such a great baby... Doesn't cry very often, and when she does, I can usually console her pretty quickly. She is a great napper, and is sleeping through the night most nights. She is starting to push up on her feet and knees... I wonder if she will be crawling soon? She grabs everything in sight. She likes to grab my face when I am feeding her, so cute :) She also loves to yank on my hair. It has been up a lot more lately :) She is making all sorts of new sounds, mostly Oooooo's and Ahhhh's, with some Ma's and Ba's thrown in there every once in awhile. She looks my way when I say her name. She is SO squirmy... this baby will not stay still!

We took a quick trip up to the cabin in the UP this weekend. Claire hasn't been quite as fond of long car rides lately. I think she doesn't like being strapped down... she just wants to move. But we got through it. We have shots later today... not looking forward to those, but they are for the best. She is such a strong and healthy girl, we have been blessed!

I am back down to my pre-pregnancy weight-YES! Last month I was only about 2 lbs over, but it feels great to be back to normal. I'm definitely not as toned as I was before, but I can work on that :)

I have to go back to work in about a month.... It is going to be so hard to leave Claire. I just keep remembering that Cassie will be watching her and she will only be a few miles down the road. Plus, when Ben gets his lay-off for the winter, she will get to be home with him. I believe this is what is best for our family... for now anyways. Only God knows what the future holds :)

Update after doc visit: Claire did great at the doctor's... she weighted in at 14 lbs 2 oz and is 26". Back in the 97% for her height! She did much better with this round of shots... Only screamed for about 3 seconds and didn't have a reaction this time :)

Claire: 3 Months!

Our little girl is already 3 months old! She amazes me every day.

Claire is growing so fast, it seems like there is something new every week! At about 10 weeks, she rolled over for the first time. I had her laying on her tummy, and she flipped to her back... and I just happened to be recording! (see video on Facebook) She went awhile before rolling again, but the past few days she has been a rolling machine. The other day I layed her on her back on her play-gym and went in the other room for a minute... came back and she was on her tummy! I missed her first back to front flip, but she performed an encore shortly after :) On the milestone chart I have, it says your baby might start rolling by 4 months of age... I guess we have a little super-baby on our hands :)

She has been sleeping GREAT. Last night she slept... 12 HOURS STRAIGHT! I couldn't believe it. I changed up our routine a bit and we skipped her evening nap. I'm going to continue to do that and hopefully she keeps sleeping that long at night. Usually she goes about 8 hours and sometimes wakes up in the middle of that. I really can't complain!

Our friends let us borrow their jumper and I thought Claire might be a bit too small for it yet, but she's doing pretty good! Her feet don't reach the ground so we put some phone books under her feet. She loves it so far... all smiles :) I have been putting her in her crib for naps (as well as the swing sometimes) to get her used to it... We will probably be moving her into her own room soon... yikes. I'm sure that move will be harder on me than her. I'm so used to having her right by my side in her bassinet at night, within arms-reach. She is sleeping 8 hours in a row at night now, most nights... I put her to bed at 9 and she usually wakes up at 5. Sometimes she wakes up around 1, and I just put the pacifier in and she goes back to sleep. After I feed her at 5, she will sleep til about 9... so I have been getting a pretty good amount of sleep lately!

Claire loves going outside. When she starts go get fussy, I will step out on the porch and she usually stops fussing right away. We will sit and swing on the porch swing and she just loves it. Lately we have been going for walks outside in the stroller, and she loves that too. Last weekend, Ben and I started working on our first garden and she sat in the stroller the whole time, totally content. I think she's going to be an outdoors girl :)

We didn't have a doc's appointment this month, so I don't have weight/height stats... but she seems to be growing great! Ben helped her with her first doggie ride on Haley the other day.... so precious. (see video on Facebook) She is a very happy baby the majority of the time, and I just love watching her discover her world.

Our first Anniversary is on Monday... I really can't believe it has been a year since our wedding already! I have always heard that the first year of marriage/living together is the hardest. Well, if that was the hardest year, then we sure have a promising future ahead of us. God has been so good to us.

Claire @ 3 Months

My favorite baby products so far

Claire is 3 months old now, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite baby products so far-

1. Mommy's Bliss Gripe Water. If you have a colicky baby, this is the stuff to get. If she is crying/screaming inconsolably, I give her a little bit of this stuff and she almost always calms down immediately. She often falls asleep within minutes too. It is all natural, so I felt ok about giving it to her... and it made her feel SO much better.

2. Boudreaux's Butt Paste. This stuff is awesome... it works better than Desitin and smells WAY better. Trust me, you don't want to accidentally lick something off of your finger after you have had Desitin on it... nasty. You don't want to taste the Butt Paste either, but it is much more pleasant.

3. ItzBeen Baby Timer. I live by this thing when it comes to feedings. You just push a button at the start of one feeding and restart it when the next one comes. It is so hard to remember what time you last fed, and this makes it so you don't have to write it down. I tried just remembering times for awhile, but you forget. You can use it to track diaper changes and naps too, but I just use it for feedings.

4. Fisher Price 3-in-1 Baby Swing. I use this a lot. She falls asleep in it very quickly... I sometimes turn it off once she falls asleep so she doesn't "need" the swing to nap... but it hasn't affected her night sleeping at all, and she will nap in the crib just fine too. If she started relying on the swing to fall asleep, I would stop using it... but she does just fine :)

5. Medela. Of course I had to put my pump on this list... It works perfectly and I haven't had any problems with it. I also have a deep freezer full of milk :) I  was using the Lasinoh storage bags and those work great. Once I ran out of those, I have been freezing milk in 1oz ice cube trays. Once they are frozen, I put them in ziplock bags and into the deep freezer. Also works great!

Some other random tips-

-Olive oil (or baby oil) on baby's head when it gets flaky. Claire has had a really flaky scalp lately, so I tried some olive oil (I did not notice it was seasoned with herbs, so she smelled like olive garden haha) and it worked great!

-Babywise. I read this book and have done my best to stick with the eat, play, sleep routine. It has worked out great for us so far. Last night we skipped her last evening nap, and she slept 12 hours straight! I'll be sticking with that from now on :)

-Clean out those ears after baths! The other night, she was itching and tugging on her ear and fussing quite a bit... turns out, she had some soap left in there from her bath. I cleaned it out with a baby Q-Tip and that fixed it.

-Massaging the tear duct... Claire had a goupy eye that I had to clean out constantly. The doc told me she might have a partially blocked tear duct and to just massage it with my finger every so often. I tried it, and sure enough her eye cleared right up.

Ok that is all I can think of for now. Hopefully this will help someone.. if not, I will refer back to this when ever we have our next little one!

2 Months!

So Claire is 2 months old already. We are loving every minute of parenthood :)

We had her 2 month check-up (and shots...) on Wednesday. She weighs 11 lbs 8oz and is 24 1/4 inches long. 41.2 head circumference. 95% for height, 75% for weight and 94% for head size... we have a big girl! Her vaccination shots weren't so fun. I'm glad Ben was there with me. She was not a happy camper... when we got home she napped and Ben left for work. When she woke up she was screaming like she did when she got her shots and felt fever-ish. I gave her some Tylenol and she eventually calmed down. Breaks my heart when she cries like that :( That was Wednesday... last night she had a rough spell again and we had a hard time getting to sleep. She kept crying and crying, which is so unlike her. She is usually very consolable... I'm pretty certain it was from the shots. I've heard the 2 month shots are the worst, and they do better for the next 2 sets. She finally went to sleep about 11:30, and slept... ALL NIGHT!!! First time ever. I was so excited when she woke up at 7:30. I'm not sure if it was because she wore herself out from all of the screaming and crying, or she's just ready to sleep at night now. Before tonight, she usually wakes up every 3-4 hours. Once she went 6, but that was the most until last night. Let's hope this can continue :)

She is doing really great with her development. She has been smiling away for about a month now, and her noises are changing almost every day! All sorts of new coo's... and I swear yesterday when she was "talking" to me, it sounded like she said "I love you!" haha... more like ahh-woo-vuu.... but still, melted my heart :) Her skwaks are starting to sound like laughs... she is holding her head up great now, and bears all of her weight when I hold her standing up. It's truly amazing watching her grow and develop so fast!

Ben is still working down in Mecosta this week. Unfortunately, he's working nights. Fortunately, this is his last week there. He gets to start a job right by Torch Lake next week, so he gets to come home every night!!! This makes me very happy :) I hope it is a long-lasting job!

I'm already dreading having to go back to work.... I mean, I miss everyone at my job and I really do enjoy what I do, but not being with my baby all day is going to be SO hard. It makes me feel better knowing that when Ben gets done working sometime in October, he will be home with her all day. We have about 2 months where we both are working. I'm pretty sure we are going to take her to Chuck and Cassie's while I'm working which makes me feel better knowing she will be with family. They also live just a few miles from the school, so I won't be far away at all. We'll see how that goes... and I'm very happy about all of the time I did get off.

We are dedicating Claire to the Lord on Sunday :) Greatly looking forward to it... We are beyond blessed!

 2 Months

 Family

First Mother's Day :)

1 Month Update

It's hard to believe baby girl is already 1 month old! Being a Mommy has been amazing so far :)

The first couple of weeks was quite exhausting. She was up every couple of hours in the night to eat (sometimes more often) and we had lots of visitors, which was expected and welcome of course. I was dreading when Ben had to go back to work... I knew I could handle it on my own, but I was just sad to not have him there. Nursing was a challenge at first. I had to get a shield because it was quite painful... once I started using that, things went much smoother. Now, I'm able to nurse just fine without it. I pump one side while she is nursing the other, and give her between 1 and 2 ounces in a bottle after she's done nursing... keeps her much more satisfied.

We've had a few bouts of colic/reflux and got some gripe water, which has helped a ton. She hasn't had it for about a week, so hopefully she's handling it better now.

She is doing GREAT at night now. Sometimes she even sleeps 6 hours straight... so nice for me :) We have been staying in Harrison the past couple of weeks since Ben is coming here to sleep at night. I'd rather have an hour or so with him than none at all... and I don't really like staying at home alone by myself all the time. We spent Easter down here too, and had a great family dinner at Ben's Grandparents' house.

At her 1 month checkup, she weighed 9lbs 15oz and was 23 1/4 inches long, which is in the 97th percentile for length!

Everything is going great!

Welcome Claire Ann!

I know this is a bit delayed, but our precious baby girl is here! We are SO in love... she is absolutely perfect. Here's the story of her arrival...

On Weds 3/14, I had a doc's appointment at 3:30 where they did a fetal non-stress test. Right near the end of the test, she rolled onto her cord and her heart rate dropped... this was enough concern for our doctor to send us to Triage to get checked out. We were kind of excited, because this might mean they would want to induce, but chances were slim. After a couple hours there, everything checked out just fine and we were sent home around 6:30. On our way home we stopped and met some friends for taco night, and got home around 9.

At 10:30 that night, I was in bed and just drifting asleep... and my water broke!!! It wasn't a huge amount at first... I was able to make it to the bathroom without making a huge mess. I was in there for about 15 minutes just leaking nonstop... and I knew I just had to grab a towel and get ready to get the show on the road! I came out and Ben was sleeping... I said, Hey Honey, my water broke! He half-woke up and said, "Where?" HAHA. He thought a pipe broke somewhere and water was spraying in the house... He soon figured out what I meant. I called the hospital and got ahold of the on-call doctor and he told me to come in. We grabbed our bags and headed out the door (and my water was going all over the place...). We arrived at Munson around midnight and had to go through the ER because the main doors were closed. When I was getting out of the car, another huge gush came out... the wheelchair guy looks at me and asked if I was ok. I just said yep, my water broke... He goes, "Oh my..." haha. We made our way back to Triage again, and this time they kept us! They determined my water had broke (which I was well aware of) and I was dilated to about a 1.5. They admitted me and gave me a 1/4 pill of Cytotec to get things going. About half hour later, the contractions started. They weren't horrible, but they were enough to keep me awake all night. They were about every 3-4 minutes apart. In the morning, they told me my contractions were consistent enough that I wouldn't need anymore of the drug and that I wouldn't need Pitocin.

We had a great nurse that night, but things changed the next morning... At 11 am, they changed shifts. Right off the bat, I could tell that this lady would not be nearly as helpful. She wasn't trying to help me with dealing with contractions (which were getting pretty intense at this point) and just wasn't keeping us very informed. I had the fetal monitors hooked up to me every hour for 10 mins. During the night, I would move and sometimes they'd lose the fetal heart rate, and the nurse would come running. This was no longer the case, and it was kind of worrying us... at one point, Ben hit the call button because there was a big question mark on the monitor.

So, the doctor came in around 8am and checked me, and I was at 5cm. He said he'd be back in around noon to check... well 1:00 came around and still no check. I had no idea where I was, and I was about ready for an epidural at this point, mainly due to pure exhaustion. I wanted to make sure I was at a 7 though, so I didn't slow down the labor. I asked the nurse about getting me checked, and she said she could do it... she said I was at a 7, Perfect. I asked for the epidural. The nurse first had to give me an IV, which she was very unsuccessful with... she missed the vein and was probing around with the needle in the side of my wrist trying to hit it. This was almost more painful than my contractions! I asked her to stop, and she went to get another nurse to start the IV. This one took 2 tries, but she got it. 20 mins later, I got the epi and was able to sleep for 2 hours which was amazing.

At about 4:00, the doctor came back to check me. He said I was at... a 5!!! I hadn't progressed at all and the nurse was wrong. The epidural had slowed things down, and I now needed Pitocin. After I got that, the contractions started getting more intense and I was starting to feel them again. I asked the nurse if she could bump up my epidural a bit. She had to shut the pump down to do this and was punching buttons for about 5 minutes... and my pain was getting worse and worse. She said it was all set, and I'm pretty sure she forgot to turn the pump back on because my pain went through the roof. Ben said he didn't see the epidural bag moving at all either... I asked her a couple times to check it and she said it was fine. UGH. I asked her about getting a catheter because I hadn't gone to the bathroom since I got the epidural. She said oh, we'll do that at some point. Well, I got to the point where I had to start pushing and she went to grab the catheter, and she was trying to get it in (very painful) and realized she couldn't get it around the baby's head anymore. So I got to give birth with a full bladder which I guess makes pushing more difficult...

The doctor finally came in when I was in the pushing stage. He said I'll be right back, and went to deliver another baby. He got back just in time. I gave birth at 6:55pm on 3/15 and it was the most euphoric, happy, (painful), incredible moment I could have imagined. As soon as they put her on me and she was crying, none of that pain I went through mattered anymore. All that mattered was that we had a beautiful, healthy baby girl in our arms.

Claire weighed in at 7 lbs 15 oz and measured 21 inches long. She passed all of her tests with flying colors. Ben and I decided to get home as soon as we could, so we were discharged around 8:30 on Friday. The rest of the nurses we had were all great... just had the one who made things much harder for me. But we delivered our perfect baby girl, and that was all that really mattered to us :)

I've heard a lot about the love you have for your child... but I really never understood it until now. I love this baby girl SO much, its impossible to put into words. I also felt the love for my husband grow as I watch him be an amazing Daddy :) We are so incredibly blessed... GOD IS SO GOOD!