Feeding the Ducks

There is a duck pond here in Livermore that we had never been to before, and we had some stale bread, so we decided to go check it out today.  Of course I had to get Paige in a cute outfit first!

Then we drove over to the pond.  There weren't that many ducks when we got there, but Lucas was still excited to feed them.

 After a while the ducks lost interest so we decided to take a few more pictures and then head home.

But then I noticed that there were some carp in the pond that were eating the bread that the ducks left behind, so we started feeding the fish.  Lucas thought that was pretty cool too.  And then as if someone had notified every duck in Livermore of our presence at the pond, they started pouring in from the other side of the pond and swimming over to eat some bread.

And then we ran out of bread... and still more ducks were coming over.  And then when I was starting to think maybe we should get out of there, they started climbing up on the bank and coming closer to us to see if we had more food.  It was at this point that I started freaking out a little bit and frantically telling Lucas to head for the car while I'm carrying the baby and all our stuff as quickly as I can without alerting the ducks to the fact that we have no more food.  I was loading the stroller into the trunk and they were literally standing there honking at me asking if I had more food and I was a little worried they might start to attack.  Once I got both kids and myself in the car, I calmed down enough to think to get the camera and take a picture of all the ducks waiting right outside the car, and that's when I noticed this...

I'm not sure how I didn't notice this sign when we first got there, but apparently you're not supposed to feed the ducks.  I wonder why!

Baby Pictures

We took some baby pictures of Paige this week.  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  They are much better than the baby pictures I took of Lucas.  I guess I'm getting better.

Ryan's mom made this hat.

Lucas wanted in on the action too.

 My sister Sarah made this hat.  Paige already has more accessories than me.

 I love her yawn in this one.

 And my all time favorite mother and baby picture.  Thank you Pinterest for the idea!

And thanks Ryan for taking the pictures and putting up with me wanting to try like 300 different poses.  It's two of my favorite things, playing dress up - and taking pictures.  I'm pretty much in heaven!

Big Brother

Lucas has been such a good big brother so far.  He's always asking about Paige and making sure he knows where she is at all times.  He tries to calm her when she cries by getting her pacifier, patting her, or singing her a song.  He sang her a song when she was crying the other day and it was seriously the sweetest thing I've ever seen.  This morning I mentioned to Ryan that we should start reading books to Paige and Lucas ran up with his most recent favorite The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

First Day of Preschool

We're doing a Joy school rotation with some of the other moms in our church for preschool.  I don't have to teach till the end of the year so I get some time before I have to teach, and I also get some time with just the baby while Lucas gets to play with friends.Win-Win!  Lucas was really excited to be going to school this morning.  He wouldn't pose without puppy and kitty, though.

It's not quite as scary sending him to school since it's only for two hours, two days a week, and it's always in someone's home.  Still, though, I can't believe he's getting to be so big.

First Week

Well, we made it past the first week.  So far Paige is still a little angel.  I don't know if it's because we've done this before so we have a little bit better of an idea of what to do this time around, or if she is just an easier baby, but she seems so much easier than we remember Lucas being.  She just sleeps all day and night.  She has gone 4 nights in a row now where she slept 5 hours straight.  She hardly ever cries, and even when she does she doesn't cry for long, just a little whine to let you know she's still there.  I'm sure over the next few weeks she'll spend more time awake and figure out how to annoy her parents, but for now we just think she's great.

We've had a lot of help from the ward and from family this week and we're really grateful for that.  Ryan has also been home this whole week and it has been nice to just relax and spend time together with our newest little family member.

Lucas likes to hold her and watch cartoons.

And he likes to share his toys with her.  We'll see how long that lasts.

Here's a couple comparison pictures between Lucas and Paige as babies. I think they look pretty similar, although you can tell Lucas was a little bigger when he was born.

What do you think?

More Pictures and Birth Story

I woke up on Wednesday morning thinking I might be in labor but I wasn't totally sure. This was weird for me cause when I was in labor with Lucas I knew right away, so I kept thinking it must not be the real deal. I'd had a few painful contractions over the two days before this so I figured it was just more of that. Luckily I had a doctor's appointment that morning so I figured we'd just go and see what the doctor said. My appointment was at 9 am and at about 8 am the contractions were getting regular and painful enough that I decided I actually was in labor and it was going to happen today. My mom hopped in the car and headed up to meet us at my doctor's appointment so that she could watch Lucas for us while Ryan and I went to the hospital. The doctor checked me and I was only dilated to 3 cm so she said to take our time getting to the hospital. We went home, made sure we had everything packed, and then we headed up to the hospital.  Here's the family picture before we headed out.

Since, my contractions weren't too bad yet, we decided we better walk around for a while before checking in to the hospital. It was about noon at this point and so we decided to head over to subway and get some lunch. I  tried to go slow so I wouldn't make myself sick, but I was starving so I pretty much just scarfed it down.

After lunch we walked around for a bit to help things along.  Around 1:30 I decided the contractions hurt enough that we could probably go in and see how things were going.  I was still feeling pretty good and the lady who was checking us in didn't charge us our copay because she said I didn't look like I was far enough along for them to admit us.  I was a little worried, but then when the nurse checked me she said I was dilated to 7 cm.  Score!  This labor was already so different from Lucas's and I was pretty happy about that.  While they were admitting us I had couple pretty bad contractions, but I was still thinking I wanted to try and see how long I could go without an epidural.  The hospital we delivered at has a laboring tub so when they asked if I wanted to try it out I said, YES!  I got into the tub and it seemed to help a lot with the contractions.  I was in there for about an hour and then at this point I decided the nurse needed to check me again cause if I wasn't almost done, then I needed some drugs.  The nurse came in to check me and said I was almost ready to go and that we should probably have the doctor come break my water, but that the doctor was busy so I would need to wait.  Two contractions later my water broke on it's own and then I was not a happy camper.  It was at this point that I decided I was not really enjoying this much, but I also realized that there wasn't much I could do about it cause I knew it was time to push.  The nurse had me try a push or two which felt a little better at first, but not so much after that.  The doctor came in, and 4 pushes later, Paige Lee George was born on September 5th at 3:59 pm.  She weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and was 19.5 inches long.  Her head was in the 33rd percentile - thank you baby girl!

My mom brought Lucas up an hour or so later.  At first he didn't seem too impressed with anything, I think he was a little out of his element.  But after a few minutes he warmed right up to her.  He loves his baby.

And here's the happy family of 4.

Lucas getting some cuddle time with mommy and baby.

Here we are getting ready to go home.  She did not like getting dressed into her coming home outfit.

Lucas likes helping her find her pacifier.

On our way home!

We're home and settling in now.  We're still a little unsure of how exactly this is all supposed to work, but for the most part Paige is just a little angel.  She has just been sleeping and eating and that's about it.  We're all pretty much in love with her.  Here's Lucas reading her a book.

And in case you didn't notice, she's already needed an outfit change and we've only been home for 9 hours.  That's my girl.  One more picture of this cuteness and then I'm off to bed.

She's here!

USS Hornet

On Labor Day we went to see the USS Hornet. We've been wanting to go and see it, but what surprised us is how much Lucas loved it. When we got out of the car, he just kept pointing and gasping and saying, "WOW!" This is the view from the parking lot. Lucas wouldn't stop looking long enough to take a picture. This is becoming a theme for him lately.

We looked around inside the ship and saw all the rooms and crew quarters and stuff.  It was all very interesting and also made me really glad that I've never had to live on a boat like that before.  There was definitely not a lot of room in there.  Lucas loved looking around at everything, and especially climbing all the ladders to get from one level to the next.

After looking around inside we went up to the flight deck and looked at the cool air planes they had up there.

 There was also a really pretty view of the city from the flight deck.

All the stuff we learned about the Hornet and how everything worked was really cool, but now that I'm writing the blog post the only thing I can remember is that they recovered Apollo 11.  They even had this quarantine vessel that you could go into that they put the Astronauts in to make sure they didn't bring any weird moon diseases home with them.  We're definitely going to have to go back sometime, because they do tours of the engine room that sound interesting, but small children are not allowed on that tour because you have to go down 6 flights of ladders deep into the boat and there's not a lot of room to move around and you all have to stay down there together.  They didn't really say I wasn't allowed, but I got the impression they weren't super excited about having a 39 week pregnant lady down their either.  Oh well, maybe next time.

We had a fun relaxing weekend together.  It was nice to be able to have some one on one time with Lucas before the baby comes too.

First Baseball Game

We took Lucas to his first baseball game on Friday night.  John and Becky had extra tickets to the San Jose Giants game.  This is a minor league team, not to be confused with the San Francisco Giants, which I was at first.

Lucas has been really into baseball lately.  Every time he sees a field of grass he asks if it's for baseball, and sometimes we see kids out playing baseball and he gets really happy about that.  So when we told him we were going to watch a baseball game, he was really excited.  You can't tell by his face in this picture that he was having a blast, but that's just because he didn't want to stop watching the game long enough to smile for the camera.

This is what he did most of the night.  His eyes were GLUED to the game.  And as is tradition in my family, we brought in some candy to snack on during the game.  Lucas liked that just about as much as he liked the game.

This was also my nephew Scott's first baseball game.  You can see him just beyond Lucas in the picture above.  His eyes were glued to the game the whole time too.  I think we have some more baseball fans in the family.

Thanks John and Becky for inviting us to go with you.  I forgot to get a picture of the whole group, but we had a fun time, it was the perfect start to our long weekend.