7 & 8 Weeks in Photos

Everett @ 7 weeks 

Daddy playing with his boys



Mommy hanging in the hammock with the boys over Easter at Grandma and Grandpa's house!



Everett @ 8 weeks...

Brotherly Love

We sure love them!   Praise the Lord that life with two gets easier every day... and having everyone healthy sure helps too! 

6 Weeks!

Got one posted on time!  Here's this week's picture of little Everett. 6 weeks!

And Asher is always wanting to get in on the action too...

Well it's been a pretty awful bedtime tonight, so it's off to try and get some sleep at least.  Happy Monday!

Eric

5 weeks and HOME!

* Sorry wrote this Monday but didn't get it posted.  News is a little behind but that's how it goes with two littles at home. *

Well we sure didn't expect to be in the hospital 5 days out of the last 7, but I'm glad we were able to be there as long as Everett needed to be.  I took him to the ER around 3 a.m. Monday night, or well early Tuesday morning, I guess, and we headed home around 1 p.m. on Saturday.  And is it ever good to be home!  We ended up just having to wait for his little lungs to recover enough to make it through a night without having to turn the oxygen back on, which I'm totally grateful for... wouldn't have wanted to come home not knowing if he'd make it through the night without oxygen levels dropping!  We're quarantining ourselves in the house for one more week though, just because I don't want to risk exposing him to anything else. Until the Dr. has okayed him at the one week follow up, I'm afraid his coming down with a cold at this point, before his lungs are fully recovered, might send us right back to the hospital.

We're grateful for access to health care, for answered prayers, for recovering health, and for being home!

Here are his 5 weeks pictures in the yellow chair.  I forgot how hard it was to photograph an infant.  We have about 15 of him looking to the side.  No matter how hard I tried to get him to look at the camera, there was obviously something far more fascinating over his shoulder.



Then this ones kind of cute of him stretching.



Finally one looking at me... with CRAZY eyes. :)



And the one decent forward looking pic, unfortunately has red eye and I am no technological nor photography wizard that my husband is and therefore don't know how to fix that, AND with his little balding head, and his tongue sticking out... but newborns are always cute, right??  :)

Anyway, without further ado, Everett at 5 weeks. Most importantly, HOME.

What a month we've had!

I intended to start this post with the first four weekly pictures of Everett, celebrating his first month of life (which is still what this post will be) but what I did NOT expect was to be sitting here typing it in a hospital room with my little four week old guy lying next to me hooked up to oxygen and an IV drip while I wrote it.

Unfortunately he came down with a bad cold last Thursday (RSV, in fact, unbeknownst to us) which turned into a cough, which by Monday night had settled itself into his lungs and a nice case of pneumonia. After a scary, prayer-filled drive to the ER at 3 a.m. early Tuesday morning with a teeny tiny baby who was fighting to catch his breath, we're extremely grateful that God has indeed been gracious to us again!  Our prayers have been answered so immediately, as he's very nearly been weaned off the oxygen already and we're hopeful to head home tomorrow after only just fulfilling the mandatory 48 hour minimum they put on him upon admission!  Well, at least that's our hope, based on the reports we've been getting today!

We're not pleased, obviously, that our poor little guy is going through this so young, but to a certain extent we are grateful we've been through it before with Asher's hospitalizations (with RSV at 4 months and with pneumonia at 17 months) and kind of know what is going on and what to expect with a respiratory infection in the hospital.

So that said., let's celebrate his first month!


Here he is at 1 week...

My failed attempt to prop up a one week old. :)

2 weeks...  What a difference one week can make!  :) 

3 weeks...

4 weeks...  : (.

We technically didn't come to the hospital until the day AFTER his one month birthday (which just happened to be exactly four weeks because February is short) but we didn't get the picture taken on the day of and now we're no where near the yellow chair for a few days, so this will have to suffice unfortunately.  

Everett has been a huge joy and blessing in our lives.  I'm still adjusting to two and what that means in our daily routine, but he has done what he could to make it easy on me.  He's an awesome sleeper at night.  3 1/2 hours has been the minimum length between nighttime wakings and feedings, thus far!  Naps have been a little more stressful just trying to balance getting him settled somewhere semi-quietly while also not denying Asher too much attention when he's trying so hard to be patient and good.  I feel like I spend an hour trying to get him to sleep, and then an hour giving up on it while he chills and intermittently fusses and then finally puts himself to sleep.  I debate giving up the "trying" portion, but seriously should a newborn be awake for 2-3+ hour stretches and then absolutely crash for 3 hours?  Not sure about that one, but we'll get it figured out eventually, I'm sure.  Asher loves his little brother so much and has adjusted to him being around and needing mom's attention sometimes too... but it's still been a bit of a steep adjustment period for me.  I guess that has more to do with just their ages, and balancing things like disciplining and potty training, with newborn nursing and napping, and not feeling guilty for needing to love on and attend to one more than the other from time to time.   It'll settle down with time and experience, I'm sure... or at least I hope.  :)

Well I'd better go attend to my littlest.  We'd appreciate your prayers for Everett as he continues to heal. We're also extremely grateful for Grandma Anderson for driving three hours at a moment's notice to hang out with Asher this week... even though it's already her fourth or fifth time here since Everett was born four weeks ago.  She is a servant-hearted lady, that is for sure, and I'm so blessed to have her as my mom!

 

Feed the Birds

Thought you all might enjoy.  :)  

Welcome to the world, Everett Richard!

I should be sleeping right now, since both of my sons (I cannot get over the fact that I have TWO sons!) are currently napping and I only got four broken up hours of sleep last night... but napping is pretty much all I've been doing during every spare moment I could find for the last two weeks and my living room and kitchen are in complete disrepair (though that just happened in the last couple days since the grandparents left and I've been on my own), BUT not gonna deal with that now either, because my second child was born over two weeks ago and I still have not posted an introduction to my online "scrapbook" of a blog. 

So without further ado....

Introducing EVERETT RICHARD DOBBS!   :)    Born February 24th, 2014 at 8:30 p.m. at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines via successful VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean)!!!  Weighing in at 9 lbs 4 oz and measuring 21 1/2 inches.  Welcome to the world, little guy!  We're so excited to have to you here!    

Sweet SUCCESS! :) 

Asher has adjusted remarkably well so far and after a couple days of learning to share mom and dad's time and attention, is now constantly kissing and hugging "his baby."  He talks to Everett like he understands everything, tries to gets Everett to play with him, gets excited whenever Everett wakes up from a nap, and thinks doing "tummy time" together is now the greatest thing ever!  :)  He most frequently is asking Everett "Whas your name?"  To which he answers himself after a few minutes saying "You Baby Everett?"

Crazy to think we're now a family of 4!

We've been blessed to have a revolving door of the grandparents coming and going, and coming and going, and coming and going...  for the first two weeks of his little life!   I cannot thank them enough for all the meals cooked, laundry washed, and babysitting provided, so I could sleep, shower, recover, and just overall adjust to having a newborn at home again, only this time around with a two year old as well, who of course wants to jump in bed with me at 6:30 every morning, no matter how much sleep I got the night before. :)

Grandma and Grandpa Anderson

Everett Richard with his namesake Grandpa Richard!
(Asher Joseph was named for Grandpa Joey, who so far
has been unable to make it to see Everett, but will soon!)

Grandma Dobbs

             
We've been blessed beyond measure by our two sweet boys,  and while I've been teetering into a state of panic these last few "first days at home by myself" days, God has shown himself ever present and given me countless "saving" ideas that I know were not coming from anywhere in my sleep deprived brain.  Simple things like reading to Asher when Everett needed to nap in order to create a little calmer and quieter atmosphere just until Everett falls asleep (as he was having a hard time getting in to a deep sleep with Asher at full volume)... or just realizing that I could nurse Everett while I was putting Asher down for his nap rather than having to choose between delaying Asher's nap to feed Everett or leave Everett fussing while I put Asher down.  I feel like both of those ideas should have been obvious solutions, but they were some of the silly little things I was panicking over how to deal with, and so I'm crediting God for providing the necessary wisdom as I adjust to two little boys needs and schedules!

We're definitely feeling blessed, which pretty much sums it up.  I'm working on a birth story post and the first few weekly pictures of Everett that we'll get up here soon!  We've been taking the pics, just haven't gotten them posted.  :)   So anyway, here's hoping our newest arrival motivates us to a little more frequent blogging once more, but life is definitely in a constant state of adjustment for the time being.

Can't believe I forgot this! :)

So nobody probably cares... but since my daily life can hardly handle the mountains of dishes, laundry, and keeping a clear path through the tornado of toys in the living room (and it's a miracle if those even happen), it's a HUGE accomplishment that something like Asher's Room Re-decorate  (see yesterday's post) ever happen around here... and well, if I'm gonna show it off, how could I have forgotten the central DIY project I threw myself into (very SLOWLY over several months time) - THE DRESSER!  :)  

Here's the before...

 

I snagged this treasure at a garage sale for $10 last summer and it had obviously been sitting in a garage for some time.  Lots of mouse poop and dead spiders and junk in the drawers. I thoroughly scrubbed it ALL down with bleach (several times), sanded it, taught myself how to use wood putty (whether successfully or not), and primed it a coat or two, before the weather turned bad with the changing of the seasons and it was brought inside where Eric graciously painted it the three coats of red paint it required (so it didn't look pink!) and so I didn't fumigate the baby by painting indoors!    This dresser inspired the room colors, because don't ask me why but when I looked at it and asked it what color it wanted to be painted, it clearly answered me back with the words "bright red."  :)  

So anyway, without much more ado, here's a recap of how it turned out with a facelift, some love, and a bit of new hardware. :) 

 

I love how it turned out!  (Though it'll be months before anything else along these lines occur around here!)  :)