Introducing...

Annalyn (Annie) Campbell
born October 29, 12:05 pm
8 lbs. 11 oz.
20.5 inches

Welcome to the world little Annie!

With Daddy:
Ready for bathtime:
Nevermind, not ready for bathtime:
Big sister Rachel was so ready to welcome Annie. And to visit Mom and Dad.
Holding her new baby sister:
We are a happy family. So glad to have both our cute little girls!
Rachel was a fan of Annie's cute hair.
Annie's hair is a bit lighter than Rachel's black hair she had when she was born, and I guess it's about the same length. I thought it was shorter than Rachel's, but right now, looking back at Rachel's baby pictures, they look about the same length. I was convinced Annie would be a lot balder than Rachel because I had a lot less heartburn this time around than with Rachel. Annie's not exactly bald, but she may have slightly less hair than her big sister did. (I'm pretty sure that for confident children later on it's good to compare them to each other often, right? ;)
Grandma and Grandpa Knight have been so nice to entertain Rachel while we've been hanging out at the hospital. And we love that they live so close and can bring her over to visit, or Jake can run over there to eat or take a nap.

Grandma brought Rachel over to visit today, too, and Rachel got to stay for a while and hang out with us and watch The Little Mermaid.
She's been a trooper, but misses Mom and Dad a bit, I think. So tonight Jake went home to sleep and to let Rachel sleep in her own bed, and hopefully get a regular night's sleep, which she's not all too good about with all the excitement at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

For those who care, here's the birth story. For those who don't, skip down to see the Annie/Rachel look-alike contest.
I've been afraid of going all the way to my due date with Annie because Rachel was 8 lbs 15 oz born on her due date, and a lot of the time babies get bigger as you go along and I didn't want to give birth to a 9+ pound baby (which it turns out was a valid fear--if Annie was born on her due date she would have likely been 9 1/2 pounds--at 38 weeks 2 days she still was only 4 oz. short of matching Rachel's weight). Anyway, so fearing a big baby I wanted to go into labor early, and decided to take a little castor oil, since my mom, my aunt and my sis. in law all have strong testimonies of castor oil. :) With Rachel I was way too chicken to take the full 2 tablespoons, so I tried 1 teaspoon, which got contractions going for 3 hours, but not very regular ones, then they quit. This time around I was still afraid of the full 2 T. but thought if I'm going to try this I should just do it, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it all the way, so did 2 less-than-full-tablespoons--probably about 1 1/2 tablespoons a little after noon on Thursday.
Thursday afternoon around 4 pm I was having contractions and by 7:00 they were every 2 or 3 minutes, but not any more painful than my Braxton Hicks contractions that I've been having for months. But we decided to go in anyway, since it would be easier before Rachel's bedtime when we could just drop her off and Grandma and Grandpa's house, rather than waiting for them to drive out to our house, then drive in to the hospital. In the car the contractions began to be a bit more uncomfortable. Wednesday I'd had a doctor's appointment and was 3 cm dilated and 60% effaced. At the hospital I was still 3 cm, but I think a little more effaced. They had us wait in the OB triage area for an hour, then rechecked me and I was 4 cm and 80% effaced, so they admitted me at about 9:30 that night. At midnight they checked again and I was only about 4.5 cm and the contractions were slowing down. They didn't really pick up the rest of the night. I'd lay down and rest, or sometimes fall asleep for a half hour at a time, then go walk the halls, having contractions off and on, but the contractions were obviously not strong enough or often enough for anything to be happening with labor. But since I was comfy enough and it was the middle of the night, we let the doc sleep and in the morning gave her a call and she said to go ahead with some pitocin to augment labor and get things going again. So at about 7 am I got pitocin started, and contractions started right back up, and soon were getting stronger. The doctor came in and broke my water around 8 or 8:30. I was still just at 4.5 cm at that point. Around 9:30 I got an epidural because I knew that with pitocin the contractions would be getting intense sometime soon, and there was a c-section scheduled for later and I didn't want to get stuck without the anesthesiologist when I was ready. So when I actually got my epidural I still wasn't in pain. Getting the epidural was more uncomfortable than the contractions I was having at the time. After the epidural was in, around 10 am, I was about 6 cm dilated and was starting to think that this was going to take forever at this rate. By 11:30, though, I was 9.5 cm and the doctor was on her way over. Before she got there I started feeling pressure and was ready to push, but had to wait. Thankfully I had an epidural, but even then it was hard to not push. She got there at about 11:50, got suited up and I started pushing at 11:55, and Annie was here by 12:05 after 3 contractions worth of pushing. Jake hadn't eaten all that well that morning and was holding one of my legs while I was pushing, and had his legs locked, so he started to feel faint and almost passed out, but sat down instead and recovered in a couple of minutes. So now Annie is here and we're happy to have her. She is a very good baby who sleeps a ton, and eats really well.

"What you lookin' at?"

After the first few hours after Annie was born we thought she looked a lot different than Rachel did, but after a short time when some of her splotchy newborn face had normalized I realized she looks A LOT like Rachel did when she was just a few days old. I've been trying to find pictures where they look the same, but I don't think pictures can quite capture the faces the right way, or maybe it's just certain expressions that they look exactly the same as each other and we miss snapping the photo at that moment. Anyway, here are a bunch of Annie:


She was getting mad shortly after taking this picture because she wanted to suck on her fingers, but her binkie was in the way.

Here's one of me when I was a baby that every once in a while Annie's face with a certain expression totally reminds me of:
And here are a few of Rachel:

Anyway, I don't think the pictures capture it at all to the degree I see it, but I think Annie looks a lot like Rachel did at this point. And she's a cute kid, so things are looking good for Annie, too. :)

Tomorrow we get to go home from the hospital and have fun as a family getting to know Annie. Rachel loves Annie a bunch already, and she's going to be a great big sister.

Sorry for the novel. And the picture overload. I guess I should have made this into 5 or 10 separate posts. :)

Naptime

About a month ago we were having big fights over naptime. Rachel claimed not to be tired and didn't want to take a nap and when I would make her lay down she'd have a 20-30 minute long tantrum and be too worked up to sleep afterwards, then an hour or two later finally fall asleep, so she would wake up too late in the afternoon, making bedtime another struggle. I finally just gave up on naps and life was so good. She didn't really get too cranky, and bedtime was bliss, rather than the big fight it had been because she was so tired she would just go to sleep. Of course I still need my daily nap, so I've been having Rachel stay in her bedroom reading books for "quiet time" which worked like a charm. Until last week. When she decided to start taking naps again! I'd wake up from my nap and go in to find her asleep. But she's not allowed to take naps! So I try to wake her up and usually she doesn't wake up very easily, then at bedtime she's back to coming out of her room a bunch of times instead of just going to sleep.

Today I woke up from my nap and was afraid she was asleep because all was quiet, so I went in real fast to her room, and she was just getting settled in her bed, but wasn't asleep yet. "Oh good-crisis averted," I thought. Wrong. While I was making a pancake mix in the kitchen Rachel (who had just been in the kitchen a minute before having a snack) went and gathered a pillow and blanket and laid down on the entryway floor (nice HARD tile) and fell asleep.

The bum.

Picnics

Rachel is really into pretend play lately. It is so fun to watch and listen to her talking to and for her stuffed animals. They were all hungry the other day, so they had a picnic on our futon with felt food. Yum.

Saturday we decided to go to the park to enjoy another picnic, since it was just up to the 70s all last week, so we could actually enjoy some fall weather without driving up the mountain. Rachel enjoyed the chips, then was off to play. When we were done she was finally hungry and ate her sandwich on the way home.

Rachel loves the swings at the park because she can swing so much higher than she can in ours at home.

It was a lovely picnic at the park.

On a completely unrelated note, this is the face I woke up to yesterday:

"Now I look like Mommy! I have her pretty lipstick on." Sunday before church she came and told me, "I wish I had a black skirt and a white shirt and brown hair, then we could be twins." (that's what I was wearing) Apparently the twin idea didn't die. I guess it's nice to have my own little copycat, especially a cute one.

Mt. Lemmon picnic

Last weekend we went up the mountain to enjoy a nice fall picnic where it actually felt like fall. It seems like it worked well to bring fall to Tucson because last week we've had highs in the 70s. So nice. We really enjoyed the pine trees and cooler air.
Rachel really enjoyed the dirt and the pine cones on the ground and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa Knight. She also really enjoyed walking on her little log path stepping from one to another:
She took Grandma and Grandpa on several mini-hikes to explore the area.
She also enjoyed some hide and seek.
Counting for hide and seek: She counts really well 1-20, but ALWAYS skips 16. Who needs 16 anyway? (We just got Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and he also skips 16--must be a rather unpopular number, I guess.)
Rachel also ate her fair share of Snickerdoodles.
Snickerdoodles are my favorite! I also ate my fair share. And Jacob's fair share, since he couldn't have the gluten-ized cookies. Someone's got to step up and take one for the team. I'm just glad it could be me. :)

Happy Halloween

Tonight we had our ward Halloween party, which may end up being our only candy gathering adventure this year. Rachel pulls out her princess dress from last year probably once a week to dress up in. So when I asked her what she wanted to be, she was pretty set on wearing her princess dress. Sounds good--no work for me. My big fat belly was just asking to be a basketball or jack-o-lantern, so I gave in.

Rachel had a ball at the trunk-or-treat, which turned out to be indoors since it actually was rainy today (which NEVER happens between October and January, but I'm not complaining). As we were walking down the hall to the next people handing out candy, Rachel looked up at me and said, "This. is. AWESOME!" So funny. I'm glad she had a fun time.

And since my pumpkin belly got cut off in the above picture, here's a full picture of my big fat belly.

Ug-uh-ly

Rachel found my glasses the other day--the ones I wear maybe twice a month when I'm driving somewhere that I need directions to and need to read signs when it's dark, otherwise I can see perfectly fine and forget about/lose them for weeks at a time. Anyway, Rachel found them and tried them on. I snapped a picture, and as usual, after she sees the camera flash she runs over demanding "let me see!"

She looked at her picture and declared, "I look ug-uh-ly!" Silly girl. I think she looks pretty cute.

Random exerpts from our life

Rachel playing dress up:

(Crown 9er compadres--do you recognize that wig? :)

The other day during the blessing on dinner: "Please bless this food to get good...." Now I know how she feels about my cooking. :) At least she has faith in miracles. ;p

Rachel walks around saying, "According to my research..." and tells me something, like that she wants to read a book, or is hungry, or that it's a hot summer day, or whatever. She fell in love with the Magic School Bus DVD that we checked out from the library last week, where one of the girls is always commenting on her research. It sure sounds funny.

At the dollar store the other day I told Rachel she could get some stickers if she was good. But then she found this FANCY hat and happily gave up the stickers in exchange for the hat. It also serves as a plate for her felt food.

Last night Rachel woke up because her legs were itchy from bug bites. She decided she needed to go potty after I put some benadryl cream on her legs and as I was waiting for her to be done, out of nowhere she says, "Mom, you are the best!! I know you love me!" How sweet. It made the waking up in the middle of the night almost worth it.

Today I was unloading the box of baby toys from the garage, which ended up being mostly books (as if we don't have enough kids books--a week or two ago I counted 110, but didn't realize we had another whole box in the garage). Rachel has been in book heaven looking at all the books she had forgotten about (and are really too short for her, now that her attention span is 2 whole minutes instead of 10 seconds). She kept talking about how she was going to read the books to her baby sister, and was reading them to her "babies" (ie. stuffed animals). Every once in a while she'd bring me one and ask me to read it to her. After one of them I told her I thought that was a good book for her to keep in her room, because it was more for big girls than for babies. Oh the excitement! She did a little clapping and ran to give me a hug and told me "Mom! You are soooo AWESOME!" Oh, the little joys in life. That's twice in one day she's told me I'm pretty cool. It must be true. ;)

I've been slowly getting things out of the garage and washing off the dust to get things ready for this baby that will be here sometime in the next month or so. Rachel thinks it's just a ton of new toys for her to play mommy with. Her stuffed animals and Little People get baths and get put down for naps with the baby blankets. But last night she decided she would fit just fine in the baby bathtub:
Not quite.