One of those perfect moments.....

This is Samantha with her guys.  She got them for Christmas and had I known that I could spend 15 bucks and change her life, I would have purchased them a long time ago.  She carries them everywhere.  Upstairs, downstairs, outside, on walks, in the car, in the bath.  Lately, her favorite thing to do is line them up in the windowsills and look outside.  Today she was having them fall off and having Ernie crawl to save them.

In the midst of this playing, I was laying on the floor in her bedroom watching her.  At one point she walked over to me and layed down on my chest and gave me a huge hug.  She then looked at me and smiled and gave me a kiss.  It almost made me cry.  Right after the kiss, right as I am thinking she is the best thing ever, she says, "Show?"  Turns out she has already learned to butter me up before asking for something she wants.
Needless to say, it was really hard to say no.

And then there were 2.....

 How is it that an entire month has gone by and I have yet to blog about the most recent addition to our family?  Since this is a journal of sorts, here's what went down:

We went in to be induced on February 1st about 12:30.  We were told that they had just suddenly gotten busy so it would be a while.  Chris and I settled in to watch some White Collar.  After about 1 1/2 hours I was starting to wonder if they had forgotten about us so I pushed the call light.  They assured me they had not and around 2 they came into start my IV and Pitocin.  I was starting off at 3 cm.  Around 5:30 I sent Chris out to get some dinner and the OB came in and decided to break my water.  I was 5 cm then.  I got my epidural soon after and set in for the wait.  At one point I started to feel really light headed and they checked my blood pressure and it had bottomed out.  The nurse checked me and said, "oh, the head is about to come out- don't push".  She left and got the OB who was in delivering another baby so we waited about 10 minutes.  She came in and after two sets of pushes out she came around 9:30 pm.  When I first saw her the cord was around her neck and she was pretty blue.  After a couple seconds she pinked up nicely.  Chris was excited that he was the one to announce it was a girl.  She weighed in at 8 pounds even.  I pack em in for sure.  

Overall, it was a completely different experience than Samantha's.  Less people in the room since it wasn't a teaching hospital, faster, much less pushing.  What I mean to say- it was awesome.  

We decided to name her Madilynn Claire Brown.  We chose that spelling because I didn't want people always wondering if it was pronounced Mad-e-line or Mad-i-lynn.  Instead, people will just always spell it wrong like mine!

Here she is:

One of the best moments thus far as a mother was seeing Samantha's reaction to Madilynn for the first time.  She instantly wanted to hold her and hug her (at least for 5 seconds!)  

By her 2 week appointment she was already up to 8 pounds 12 ounces- nursing is also going about 1 million times better than the first time around.  Since spending the first month of her life being cuddled because their were so many extra grandmas and people around she is having a hard time adjusting to her crib.  It really is hard to put her down though, she's just so darn sweet and cute.  Doesn't cry unless she has pooped (this girl really HATES farting and pooping) or she is hungry.  Welcome to the family Madilynn, hope you like us as much as we like you.

Lets give them something to talk about.....

Today was a big day. I went to church after missing the last 5 weeks since Madilynn was born. So what's so big about that you ask? I did it all by myself and on the amount of sleep a person with a newborn gets. I thought I was prepared. A sling to carry Madilynn in, snacks and distractions for Samantha, all my lesson material.  We were even on time. We had a bench seat. I got this I thought.

All it took was one michevious smile from Sam as she took off running across the congregation in sacrament meeting to know I will never be that prepared.  There were multiple times when i was carrying both of them down the hall. One sleeping, one throwing a tantrum.  I was hoping I had chosen a dress in which my sweat was not as visible as i felt it probably was.

Sam was so excited to go to nursery, but you'd never know it by the way she was blood curdling screaming at the gate after I dropped her off. People were laughing, I wanted to cry.

All during my YW lesson I felt disorganized and disheveled because my mind was wondering when they would show up at the door with her or when Madilynn would bust out into tears because she hadn't eaten much at her last feeding.

I haven't ever run a marothon, but I'd venture to say that today I ran an emotional marothon. I'll need brownies tonight, lots and lots of brownies.

D-Day.........

When I was 15 I was getting ready to start high school. I decided I was going to be awesome and challenge myself and take AP European History with the infamous Mr. Rice. Little did I know that this would include having to read a book during the summer and write an essay about it. The book that was assigned was D-Day by Stephen Ambrose. I thought, this could be interesting and I will learn a lot.

Well, let me tell you, it was a very long book. It felt like it drug on and on and on. Sure I learned a lot about war and heroism, but not really my cup of tea.

My second D-Day experience came on April 5th 2011. I was positive that I would be a mom for the first time, after 40 weeks of pregnancy, I wanted a baby!  I got induced 2 days later and then finally had Samantha on April 8th.

As of midnight last night I find myself on my third D-Day experience and I am realizing that it is much like the first two. I came into it with much anticipation and expectations and it turns out it continues to drag on and on.

I am planning on an induction tomorrow afternoon (unless they are booked and then they can push me back) so it's looking like a do-over of Samantha. Hopefully this ones head won't be quite so large!

My girl.....

What do you do when you are past your due date and can't sleep- you catch up on blogging.  

 I guess I am getting a little emotional that I only have a couple more days as the mother of one.   It's hard to imagine loving anything as much as I love this girl.

She loves to "help me" cook.  We have matching aprons and everything.  She basically hounds me by throwing herself at my feet and saying "up" one million times until I lift her up onto the counter.  I then spend the next 30 minutes trying to keep her from eating raw eggs or meat or burning her hand in the toaster.

She hates it when I get in the shower.  She sometimes gets to watch a show so that I don't have to listen to her bang on the shower door.  She is seen here enjoying a tube of toothpaste with her show.  

After hearing my stories about her bi-polar nature one day, Chris said, "she's like Jekyll and Hyde".  As seen below:   

Hyde

vs. Jekyll

 She discovered that glow sticks only make bath time more fun.

Here she is doing one of her favorite things: climbing around in the car.  She knows that honking the horn is a no, no, which only makes her want to do it so much more.  Little stinker.

Her vocabulary has really exploded over the past couple of weeks.  It is so fun to hear her say new words.  The past few days we have been talking about expressions.  My favorite is her pretending to laugh, but she also does a really good sad face, surprise face, and shy face.

She has a baby that we call Tiny (perhaps it is because the word tiny is written on its shirt).  Tiny has a hat and Sam decided that she needed to have one too.

She loves to climb on anything and everything- especially at the park.  Here she is telling me she wants a snack, for her and Elmo.  They both love cheese, chocolate milk, and yogurt.

A couple last shots as a family of 3:

 Man we love this girl and can't wait to meet the next member of our family. I have a feeling that this baby is going to get plenty of love from their big sister.

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.....

I haven't written in so long that I have some serious catching up to do.  I decided that you know you are a mom when this little snowman can bring you to tears.  

This is Sam's first home maid ornament, brought to you by nursery.  I displayed it proudly on our tree this year as I am sure I will do for years to come.  As far as nursery goes, we are 4 months in and we are finally getting the hang of things.  Samantha usually whines when I leave, but then when I peek in on her (those nursery peep holes are awesome) she is usually wondering around with some sesame street toy she has found or eating a snack happily at the table.  Our new church time is 2:30-5:30 this year- which isn't helping things, but she will get the hang of it.  Now its time to work on reverence during sacrament meeting.  Longest hour of my life, most of which is spent out in the hall chasing her from drinking fountain to drinking fountain.You think the ward before us would notice if I took her to their nursery?

Ostrich Farm?

When we first moved to Tucson we drove in from Phoenix.  We noted that there was an ostrich farm on the side of the road.  Ostrich farm?  Turns out Ostrich Farms are pretty entertaining, and quite scary if you are small.  This particular one has donkeys, deer, goats, ostrich, ducks, and lorikeets.  You are allowed to feed all of them, although warned by many signs that some of the animals might bite!  My friends little boys arm did indeed end up inside of the mouth of an ostrich- but no harm was done.

Here we are feeding the Lorikeets.  They give you a cup of necter with a lid on it and you just hold it in your hand and the bird comes over and takes the lid off and drinks it up.  As you can see, it freaked both Sam and I out a little bit.  We didn't get pooped on though, so that's always a positive.

 Above is exhibit A of why I have no future as a pirate

So when I said that Tucson doesn't have any great land marks, it turns out I lied.  So please, come visit soon.