Beautiful girls

 Korbyn and Evan are both one month in these pictures.  Korbyn is the top with the bow and Evan is in the camo. 

 They have so many similarities, but I see so many differences too!  They are both beautiful beyond words :)

Sleep

I'm not really sure how we got this lucky. Since the day we came home from the hospital Evan has slept 6-8 hours at night!  She started off in a swing in our room (I would never turn it on) and by day three when I realized she was pretty consistent, I moved her into her crib into the room that the girls will share.

Our nightly routine starts around 7-7:30.  I give the girls a bath together, Colton gets Korbyn dressed and then she can either read books or watch cartoons until I call her for bed.  In the meantime, I get Evan dressed and feed her a bottle around 7:30-8 and then lay her in her crib.  She normally is still awake and will just doze off by herself.  Then Colton or I will read Korbyn a book and pat her for a few minutes and that's it!  Evan will normally wake up between 3-5 for a bottle and will then go right back to sleep until around 8.  Korbyn on the other hand wakes up around 6-6:30 and is ready to go, but I'll take that routine any day.

I'm waiting for the night where she's up every few hours and just won't sleep.  But, when that night comes I'll take it, begrudgingly of course, knowing that my wonderful sleep-filled nights are over with :(

She's so alert during the day.  After she wakes up and eats in the morning she is in the best mood!  She stays awake until 10-11 then takes about a two hour nap.  Then she's up the rest of day and takes another little nap around 4.  It's like she's on the schedule of a one year old!

Big Sister

Korbyn is slowly adjusting to another child being in the house.  Right after Evan was home Korbyn went through a phase of where she didn't want to do anything we asked her to do.  She would flat out tell us "no" which is not like her at all.  Thankfully we're reaching the end of that and if that's all she's going to dish out, we'll take it!

 The poor thing has had so much change in her little life here lately.  We had a discussion one evening after they were asleep that we both felt sorry for her because of all the changes and she probably doesn't really understand what's going on.  We talked about how we feel bad when we have to get on to her about anything now because it just seems like it hurts her feelings.  But it's very important to us that we still explain things to her and don't turn around and baby her just because we feel bad.

 She is definitely in love with her little sister!  This morning Evan was sitting in her bouncer and Korbyn went over to give her a hug and was talking to her and Evan started smiling so big at Korbyn for the longest time.  Korbyn was SO excited!  I think she'll get more excited about her the more she grows and is able to interact with her.

Korbyn is very good with her, but I can't really brag on her too much for wanting to help me with her.  There's times when she wants to help and times when Evan can be sitting right next to her screaming because her paci fell out and is laying right by her head and Korbyn will tell me, without even moving, that she can't help because she can't find her paci.

She always asks to hold her and is constantly giving her kisses and hugs, especially when we're around other people.  It reminds me of a dog marking it's territory a little bit!

I can't wait to see Evan and Korbyn interact and really play with each other...it will be interesting that's for sure.

Happy 3rd Birthday Korbyn!

Since Evan's birth was so close to Korbyn's birthday, we decided we couldn't do the costume party this year.  We had a small party at memaw Loranne's house with family only and it couldn't have turned out any better! 

We loaded up the bounce house and the kids had a blast.  The weather was a little cooler so it made it so nice to be outside.

 I know I've said it before but I will say it again, Colton and I are SO blessed to have the mothers that we do.  They are excellent mothers first of all, always willing to help out any way they can.  And are exceptional memaws on top of that.  They both worked together to put this party on for Korbyn and I can't thank them enough for making this day so special for my little girl!

 Korbyn, you are the smartest, kindest, funniest little girl I know.  You make your entire family so proud of you every day.  It's hard to believe that you are already three years old, but these have been the best three years of our lives!  We're looking forward to watch you grow baby girl.  Happy Birthday!  Love mommy, daddy, and Evan.

Welcome Baby Evan!

 She's finally here and she's absolutely perfect!  This delivery was much different than Korbyn's, thankfully Colton and I wrote everything down the day we got home so we could remember.

 We arrived at 8 p.m. on Wednesday.  By the time we got in our room, got settled, I got hooked up to the monitors and got my IV started it was 9:30 p.m. by the time they checked me and I was at 2 cm.  We watched TV, talked, and at 11:30 p.m. the nurse came and checked me again.  I was still at 2 cm but she said since I've been hooked up my contractions have been 3-5 minutes apart for two hours straight.  She asked if I've felt any and I told her no.  The exact same thing happened with Korbyn.  She said normally this is when they start the pill that softens my cervix but she can't give it to me because my contractions have to be less than three within 10 minutes.  She called my doctor and they decided to push fluids to possibly help space them out so they could start the induction.  At 1 a.m. she checked my contractions and they weren't slowing down at all, so they decided to start a low dose of the pitocin.  Colton and I got NO sleep.  The IV pump was obnoxiously loud, the monitors were so bright it was like a spotlight in the room, I had to get up and pee every 30 minutes which meant I needed Colton's help.  I only asked him a few times, because I was going so much I started to feel sorry for him if I knew he had dozed off for a few seconds.  Around 4 a.m. the storm hit and the nurse kept coming in to check on my monitors and call button to make sure they were working because the entire hospital was running off of the generators because the storm had knocked everything out.  When I say no sleep, I mean no sleep.

At 7:45 a.m. my doctor comes in and checks me and says that I'm at 4 cm.  She decides that since I'm progressing without even needing the other medicine they're going to break my water and then get the anesthesiologist in for my epidural.  Well I guess they thought that it would take a while for everything to get going, we were wrong!  At 8 a.m. they break my water, Colton steps into the bathroom to take a shower and by the time he comes out I'm in tears because my contractions are so strong and about 1-2 minutes apart. They had two anesthesiologists in my room and Colton said he overheard them talking that they were afraid they "missed" when they put it in because they couldn't get it to numb anything.  At this point I'm kind of starting to worry that the same thing is happening that happened with Korbyn, the epidural won't work. 

Around 8:30 a.m. they finally get my epidural to kick in.  They said because I was progressing so fast, the epidural literally couldn't keep up.  Colton said they injected me with about five syringes one after the other and then they even gave me some kind of stronger medicine than normal.  While they're trying to get the epidural in, I'm still contracting very hard.  So the nurse's hand became my squeeze toy, I felt really sorry for her.  I had to sit up over the edge of the bed for them to get it in and I was leaning on the nurse.  I could see that every time I contracted my water would come gushing out (sorry if this is too much info!) and the nurse's scrubs were completely soaked by the time we were finished.  When they were done putting it in, I quickly pointed to her pants and said "oh my gosh, I'm so sorry."  She didn't even notice!  She looked down and said "oh...that's ok...I'll just go change scrubs."  She was super nice about it but could tell she was grossed out.  We all had a little laugh and Colton said "at least it didn't get on your tennis shoes,"  she looked down and said "well...it did."  Bleh! 

The nurse checks me and I'm at 7 cm already.  She says "wow!  Ok, I'm going to call the doctor because it looks like a baby will be here VERY soon!"  I start telling them that I need to push and that I feel a lot of pressure.  She checks me again a little before 9 a.m. and said "oh honey, you're at a 10 already!  You ready to have a baby?"  I start pushing at 9 a.m. and miss Evan arrived at 9:25 a.m.  SO different than Korbyn's birth.  This one happened so fast!

 We're absolutely in love!

Baby update

I had an appointment last Thursday and we discussed that if I didn't have the baby on my own, we would be induced on the 31st.  I'm praying that my body will go into labor before then!  I DO NOT want to be induced again.  Yes, it's convenient and that's really the only reason we're scheduling a possible induction date.  With my new job I really need to be able to give them a date as close as possible so they can plan.  With Colton working so much down south lately, I don't want him to have to rush for four hours if I happen to go into labor and there being a possibility of him missing it all together.  With Korbyn having a birthday so close to this one, I really don't want them to have the same birthday and it's just cutting it too close.  So there are a lot of reasons why we want it scheduled.  I don't know why, but it makes me sad thinking I'll be induced again.  It's just so unnatural.  The vice principal was asking me if I felt like my body was getting close, kind of weird talking to HIM about it, but he's a dad so he can relate.  I honestly don't know if my body is getting close to labor because I've never experienced it coming on it's own, and I very much want to.

At my appointment I was dilated 1 1/2 cm and my cervix had thinned since the last time.  So there's progress being made but we're not too close yet.  I only have one more appointment coming up this Thursday and she said we'll see what kind of progress I've made to determine if we'll go in the night before on the 30th like last time or if we can just come in early on the 31st.  I'll be praying that I go into labor before then, but either way our little one will be here by Halloween!

School

 Finally!  Pictures of my classroom.  It took a lot of work and it still needs a lot of work, but it's coming along.

I had no idea how stressed and probably depressed I was at the daycare.  I know that sounds awful, and it's not that the daycare was the problem I just couldn't do what the job required of me anymore.  I now come home with no stress, I go to bed with no stress, I wake up with no stress (even my doctor continues to tell me what a difference she sees).  I have even been sleeping at night!  Normally when I would have to get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, it would literally take me hours to fall back asleep because I was constantly thinking about the daycare.  Do I miss being with my sweet girl all day?  Absolutely.  But when I look at how happy I am when I come home compared to what a monster I was, it's worth it.  I also cherish the time that I do get to spend with her now.  Not that I didn't enjoy my time with her before, but now that I'm away from her all day I just can't wait to get my hands on her!

So many people have asked me how I like it...I LOVE it.  Everyone that I work with, my grade level and the entire school, is so nice and caring.  And it just feels so comfortable being there.  It's not an easy job, but it's already so fun and rewarding.  It's hard, especially now, to be on my feet all day long.  I only get about 20 minutes to eat either a lunch that I packed or a lunch from the cafeteria in the break room.  But the good thing is, is that those 20 minutes are spent with other teachers and we usually just laugh and laugh.  Then it's back to recess duty.

I'd say the hardest thing about it is I received 19 five year olds that were pulled from six different classes.  Which means I am trying to retrain 19 children that were just getting the hang of classroom procedures, rules, and routines.  And for some, and you can DEFINITELY tell, this is the first time they've ever been in a structured setting.  I had a crier the first day and felt awful that she wanted her mommy, but now realize that this little girl cries at about everything.  The teachers did not get to pick at all who they were going to lose from their classes.  In fact, they found out in the exact same meeting that I did.  The principal let all the kindergarten parents know that there would be a new class and if they would be willing to move their child.  So the principal only had those kids to work with.  Now, think about which parents would want their kids to move.  Kids that have been great and had no bad teacher reports or conferences?  Nope.  Basically all the parents that have already received some type of notice that their kid is not on grade level or has behavior issues ended up in my class because they thought that it was the previous teacher's fault that they were getting these reports.  Well, some of them have quickly realized that it's their kid and not the teacher when I'm having to give them the exact same reports.  Needless to say, I've got a pretty tough group, I've heard this from about all the teachers so far.  I have nine wonderful little girls and ten...boys.  Somehow, I ended up with all the girls that the teachers hated to see leave.  They're very well behaved, smart, and do what they're told.  And I ended up with all the boys that the other teachers were basically pushing out their door into my classroom (not really).  All but three of my boys are out of control!  Literally!  I think some of them still need naps throughout the day or they're not getting enough sleep at home.  It's going to be an interesting year that's for sure.

What's crazy is that this only gets me more excited for next year.  If I can make it with this group of kindergartners, coming in after six weeks of school already in session, leaving for maternity leave and then coming back...I think I can do anything.  It's a great feeling when you can't wait for Monday morning!