Coming home with Megan

We have taken lots of pictures since Megan was born. Here goes trying to catch up on posting them...

When we came home from the hospital the kids were super excited about their new little sister. Then they got big brother/big sister gifts and were even more excited. The girls got a couple My Little Ponies, and Ryan got a marble works thing that had bigger balls rather than marbles that the baby would be choking on in 5 months. The marble thing was the biggest hit.

Well, Megan was the biggest hit--even with the new toys the kids kept coming over to check out the new baby. She is very loved.

We got a nice monsoon storm that blew through not too long after we got home. The next day another good one came and dumped a bunch of water. The kids enjoyed splashing in the streets a bit before dinner.

 

Then it was back to fawning over Megan. The kids can't get enough of her. Especially Annie.

Annie Meets Megan

Annie was so excited and happy when she met Megan for the first time.

The next three pictures were clipped from a video. I love the expressions on Annie's face.

You can almost hear Annie squealing with delight.

"Can I hold her?"

"Can I hold her?"

Yes you can.

Baby pictures

When we have a new baby we tend to look back at the baby pictures of our other babies. Megan seems to be a duplicate of Annie.

 Annie as a baby

 Big Annie so excited about her mini-me Megan. The look so much alike to me. And Annie was SOOO excited the whole time she was here, making that face over and over.

And just for posterity's sake, here's a picture of me as a baby:
Not exactly twins like Annie and Megan look like, but there's a certain resemblance, I think...

Baby Megan

Like Jacob posted yesterday, Megan Campbell was born on July 4th at 2:47pm. Labor and delivery were remarkably smooth.

 For those who care, here's the birth story, for those who don't, you can skip to the pictures below.

We had an appointment at 7:30 to be induced. After getting checked in and such I think they started the pitocin around 8 or 8:30, and the doc came and broke my water around 9:00. At that point I was 4 cm dilated (up from 3 at my last appointment). Around noon the contractions were finally getting painful so I put in an order for an epidural. The epidural was done by 12:45 and kicked in by 1:00, at which point I was just 5 cm dilated. 4 hours and 1 cm didn't sound that great. I tried to nap and read a little and an hour later I was 8 cm, so the nurse started getting things ready. By 2:30 I was feeling pressure, so the nurse came to check during a contraction and said to push a little, then immediately said, "OK, stop pushing!" and called the doctor and other nurses in. They came in and got set up quickly, and when they were ready I pushed on the next contraction and Megan slid right out. Easiest delivery ever. And 2nd biggest baby at 8 lbs. 7 oz.

That puts Rachel at 8 lbs 15 oz, Annie was 8 lbs 5 oz and Ryan was 8 lbs 3 oz.  I told Jacob after that delivery I could do that again no problem. If not for the 18+ years that follow (or even for the next 5 years that follow).

 Megan has a nice full head of hair that looks a lot like Annie's did, so I'm guessing it won't fall out like Rachel's did. In fact Megan's face shape and everything remind me a lot of Annie.

 After we got moved from Labor and Delivery up to our room Grandma and Grandpa brought the kiddos over. They were all very excited to see the new baby.

 Annie was particularly excited and had a huge smile on her face as she bounced around the room.

 In fact, Annie was so entranced with Baby Megan, she refused the offer of going back to Grandma's house for movie night with the other kids in favor of staying a little longer with the baby.

She kept telling me, "I think Megan needs to sneeze." I finally realized Annie was looking at the snot sucker and really wanted to use it on Megan, so I pretended to use it and she was placated for a while. We'll likely be heading home this afternoon, into the world of 4 kids and little sleep for the next little while. We've got one week to adjust to having a new baby before we add in adjusting to the new school year as well. We'll see how we all hold up. :)

Summer fun

I started this post several days ago. I guess I'd better finish it before I have to leave the hospital and take care of more than one child....

There's only a week and a half before Rachel goes back to school. The summer is short here in our school district, with year-round school (7 weeks), but it's not like we spend our summer running free outside so having it pretty short is okay. We mostly hide from the heat in our AC, or if we do go outside it's to swim. When the summer started we made a list of fun things to do at home, like make a t-shirt, build a fort, make roads out of painters tape on the carpet, etc. The kids favorite that we've done is probably building marshmallow buildings. Ryan eats the marshmallows, then waits for the girls to be done with their buildings so he can steal their buildings and eat them, too. They're never too happy when he does that.

Here are some of their buildings:

A spider:

Rachel got hold of the camera and took a nice long video of herself and a few silly pictures, like this one:

One night last month Jacob called to me to come downstairs after I was already in bed drifting off to sleep. He wanted help catching a baby snake that had made its way into our house, probably through the garage door. It was pretty small, as you can see at the bottom of this cereal box. We think it was a gopher snake--non venomous and eats the bad guys. But we took him out to the desert instead of keeping him around.

One day Rachel randomly decided she was ready for a haircut. I put her off for a couple of days in case she was going to change her mind, but she didn't forget about it, so we pulled out the scizzors.
Before:

After:

She is a fan--she barely has to do anything to it every day besides comb it and put a barrette or headband in.

The kids are so in to wrestling lately. So far only minor injuries. We'll see how long that lasts...

Ryan loves lining up his cars/bikes/anything with wheels:

Aunt Cari came down to visit a few weeks ago and while Jake and I went on a date, they built a fort for movie night and watched the movie from inside the fort. Ryan mostly played and tackled Cari, and ignored the movie altogether.

 Annie was into the movie, but also wanted to be by Cari, so at some point she ended up sitting on Cari in what looked like a very uncomfortable position for both Annie and Cari. Annie didn't even bat an eye. And Cari is just a trooper.

While Cari was here we pulled out the pool and slip 'n slide again. Hours of fun ensued.

One Sunday morning Rachel discovered that when she stood in the sunlight, it reflected off the sequins on her dress. She decided to put on a show to show off the cool phenomenon and made us all come sit down while I sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and she wiggled just a bit to make the stars on the wall twinkle.

Jacob's Aunt Helga sent these cute cupcake purses that she had crocheted for the girls. They LOVE them and use them for everything. Especially carrying around their smaller stuffed animals. Annie's has also become her special church purse she must take to church every week.

The kids accompanied me to the grocery store (horror of horrors--I HATE shopping with kids). They actually were pretty good that one time and earned themselves a treat. As you can see, Ryan really enjoyed his blue lollipop.

Monday we went to the summer movie they have at the local theater that is $1 for an older movie that is just for kids. It's at 10am on a Monday morning, and kid friendly, so I could take Ryan even knowing he might be a bit disruptive because everyone there was just kids and didn't care. Ryan and Peyton are always happy to be together. Best cousin buddies. :) Once we got inside Ryan didn't look quite so docile.

He made it through about 10-15 minutes before he was ready to go explore. He played with his cars that I had brought to distract him, and mostly just ran around the theater halls most of the time. At least the girls liked it.

Jake had to get up extra early on Monday, so when he came home from work he sat in the recliner to get a little rest before dinner. Which is always an invitation for Ryan to come climb on the chair. He told me several times that he was sleeping next to Daddy.

He's a cute little liar. Sleeping with his eyes open...

And that's a random sampling of what fun we've been having this summer. Next post, more on the new baby. But not until after I get a little shut-eye myself.