Austin is 5!

Let’s rewind a bit. It was just another day when I arrived at work on Tuesday, January 24^th 2012 to babysit my best buddies Ellee and Drake. As Julie (their mom) was leaving for work, she expressed to me that she had a “feeling” (a very real feeling) that today was THE day. Being a couple weeks early (38 weeks gestation), I didn’t think much of it but did get a little excited about the thought of it “maybe” being possible. The day moved along and before I knew it, I was in my car driving back home to Lakewood from Huron for the night. We at dinner and I went upstairs to watch American Idol. Once it was over, I went to use the restroom to get ready for bed and my water broke in the toilet. (Just about the best possible place for that to happen!) I yelled down to Paul and we were shortly on the road to the hospital back in Sandusky. As soon as we got in the car, it dawned on me that Julie was right! (well, kind of).  We made a short pit stop to drop off our cats for the next couple of days at my parents and we arrived at the hospital at about 11:00p.m.

In labor with Austin

My best friend Laura arrived at the hospital shortly after we did to help aide in my planned all natural birth (I was crazy)! My contractions had been regular and strong from the get go and I walked, rocked and breathed through them for a handful of hours. When the nurse checked me at 3:00 a.m., I had not progressed from the Doctor visit a WEEK prior! It was then that I through in the towel and got an epidural. We then all tried to get some rest and in the morning (around 10), I was checked again and had progressed to 9 cm and stayed there for many hours. I received some Pitocin to help finish dilation and at around 2:00 p.m. started pushing. I had developed a fever and the shakes from the epidural and I was code pink for delivery. This meant that everyone possible was in my delivery room. My Doctor, the Resident Doctor, the Pediatric Doctor and a Resident Pediatrician, a handful of nurses for the baby, a nurse holding my leg, Laura holding my other leg and Paul at my head. With every push, I looked out into the crowd of no less than 10 people as I delivered our baby. It was Laura, who exclaimed with tears in her voice, “It’s a boy!”

Daddy and Austins very first photo

 Paul very quickly grabbed the video camera and left the room to avoid seeing anything he wished not to see. He made the short walk to the waiting room where my Parents, my Grandma, my Aunt Cindy, Paul’s best friend Josh and Paul’s Mom all awaited the news. As he entered he announced, “Welcome to the world, Austin Hunter!” My grandpa had passed away shortly after we had announced that we were pregnant. He was an avid outdoorsman and hunter. We felt this was the best way for him to live on through Austin. If Austin had been a girl, we had chosen the name Sloane Elise (a play on the name Lisa, after my mom) something we had chosen not to share at the time and didn’t end up using when the twins were born.

Our first photo as a family

Fast forward to now! So much has changed in just five short years. Our once very pudgy baby and non-verbal toddler is now a thriving, intelligent, talkative preschooler. He continues to catch up to his peers in speech but is now lacking in other areas such as fine motor skills and processing/following directions. We have pretty much determined through his Speech and Occupational Therapists and teachers that he has Sensory Processing and Motor Planning Disorders. He will be re-evaluated later this spring to decide what assistance he will qualify for moving into Kindergarten next fall. We recently started setting personal language goals for him. Right now he starts his sentences with, “Me Austin” so we have been teaching him to self-correct and say, “I” want, need etc.

CHUBBY BUBBY

He continues to eat like a rabbit and prefers raw vegetables above all other foods. His favorite foods are tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, carrots, avocado, pizza, cheese, Cheerios with milk, salami, fish and anything chocolate. His favorite activities are playing with playdoh, building with Lego Duplos, watching and reading Charlie Brown, taking real showers alone and helping me bake. He has started to make friends and tends to interact more with girl peers. He has recently started sounding out and reading three letter words during our quiet time together. He is afraid of the dark and prefers to, not sleep alone. This makes bedtime very challenging. He more often than not falls asleep on the couch (amongst the noise and lights) and then we carry him to bed. When reading in his bed at night or laying with him to help him fall asleep, he often tells me funny or interesting tidbits, like just today he said he would like to go for a ride in Uncle Chow’s car (my brother Ryan). He has taken to giving people nicknames and has named my other brother Dylan, “Uncle Pickles.” All in all, he is just like any other child with strengths and insecurities that wants to learn, be comforted and loved. This past weekend we celebrated his birthday with a very small, just immediate family party. Like last year, he did much better with a small group of people whose faces he is very familiar with. He seemed to really enjoy his birthday again and I am very happy to keep the party small for him to enjoy and not get anxious. This year we had a Charlie Brown (he calls him Chuck) birthday because those are his current favorite characters. Tomorrow on his real birthday (the 25^th) we will be having a playdate after school with his friends and a treat, “Charlie BrownIES.”

Showering this morning before school

With his Charlie Brown cake and snoopy shirt for his birthday party

Next up to bat, we have Kelsey. She could not be more of a girl if she tried. She loves to wear dresses with tights, lets me brush and curl her hair, she is attracted to anything pink or sparkly, whines ALL the time and never stops talking. She is very polite and genuine often saying, “Please mommy, Thanks mommy and sorry” (which absolutely melts my heart). She would prefer to live on my lap and climbs into my arms whenever she gets the chance. Her favorite toys are anything she can “collect” such as play silver wear that she carries in her fists or blankets by the arm full. She loves music and will dance to any funky beat and has started to sing songs like the “ABC’s, Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. In September, I potty-trained Kelsey and she is completely day trained. We are able to leave the house and she can tell me when she needs to go and stays dry when she takes a nap. She has several dry nights during the week so we are getting closer to night training likely this spring. In December she climbed out of her crib so we decided to combine and convert their beds into what we call the “king toddler bed.” They seem to enjoy sleeping together, probably because they feel the comfort of touching someone else while they sleep. Kelsey only recently started sleeping through the night. I had an epiphany one night to put her in the Halo walking wearable blanket we had from Austin and she has slept through every night since. (Who knew, the child was just cold?) Still, we often play “musical beds” as we call it. Each and every night, (and I mean EVERY) at least one child wakes up at one point or another. If laying them back down doesn’t work the first child moves to the cot in Austin’s room for the remainder of the night. If the child is Austin then he moves to the cot in our room. Sometimes someone ends up in Austin’s bed if he’s not in his but mostly by the morning all 3 kids end up with us. This is because the twins tend to naturally wake-up at 7:30 but we let them lay with us until 8:30 when we generally all get out of the bed. They don’t sleep through the night ever but at least our kids will sleep in most days and sometimes even until 10:00.

King toddler bed

Selfies with mommy, always in my arms!

Like I said, ALL girl even fast asleep!

As Kelsey is the girly girl, Logan is very much all boy. He loves cars and anything with wheels. He enjoys building, especially with real tools. He often follows Paul around grabbing up the tape measure, hammer and random screws and pretends to build and drill things. He is very interested when Paul plays basketball with our garage hoop and tries so hard to lug around the (gigantic to him) basketball. He is very sure-footed and fast on his feet. He can walk up and down the stairs without holding on which always startles people. He was the first twin to give up napping. He will still take one on occasion but if he does then we have an extra hard time getting him to bed (like 11pm or later type of hard time). He started Speech Therapy in September and has already met all of his original goals. His speech needs are not as severe as Austin’s and he shows no signs of the motor planning concerns we have with Austin. His areas of concern are expressive (talking) and receptive (understanding) communication (which Austin did not have). Each day he’s added new words to his vocabulary and is steadily catching up to Kelsey. His current goals are to follow two-step directions and understand the concept of opposites and say- big, little, hot and cold, etc. He is very much a momma’s boy. The kids have all had phases were they favor one parent or another and right now he favors me. He like Kelsey likes to cuddle with me and falls asleep the fastest when I am holding him.

Mommy snuggles

Babies feeding babies

For months now, Logan has been asking to use the potty. He has been seeing Kelsey use it and would ask to sit. I mentally was not prepared to train him until after the holidays. He started to sit on the potty with all his clothes on so that was a very nice start. This week we are taking the plunge and finally training him at almost 2.5 years old. I had tried a couple times in the past handful of months but the concept was over his head. Let’s hope this time it sinks in! He has had quite a few successes already (which is far better than before). Logan is our best eater. He is the least picky of the three and usually asks for more food or finishes one of the other two kids meals. Unlike Austin, both twins prefer fruits over vegetables. They all love salad, pickles, cucumbers, broccoli and green beans but that is the extent of the green variety for the twins. Their favorite foods are: just about any fruit, rice, beans, cheese, fish and milk. We have been trying our best to come up with new recipes that everyone will eat at dinner. We usually make a couple additional sides just so that the kids will eat more than just the protein option. They only recently started to eat a little bit of starch or carb foods but it’s still a hit or miss scenario.

Potty time

And there he stayed for 10 minutes watching tv upside down!

A little bit about me, the business is going very well and I have been continuing to gain a steady flow of current and new clients. I had a couple of nicely profitable months this fall, which prompted Paul and I to decided to upgrade and completely remodel my studio. We’ve had the idea in the back of our minds every since the news anchor posted “behind the scenes” photographs of her sons newborn session on the Fox 8 news website. It was then that it dawned on us that maybe we needed to make my work space more professional, welcoming and appealing. In December after I wrapped up holiday card sessions we closed the studio for a whole month. We ripped up the old carpet, removed the old basic trim, laid a new laminate floor, added wainscoting to an accent wall. We extended an existing closet into the eaves for more storage, cut and painted new trim, baseboards and chair rail, painted the ceiling and bought new storage pieces to hold all of my blankets, and lastly added my logo to the wall so clients will see it as they walk up the stairs and into the studio. The difference is NIGHT and DAY! I say that because my studio used to be very dark and I needed to use extra lighting to get the proper exposure for photos. Now, it is bright with new sheers on the large windows, which provides perfect crisp ambiance. For Christmas, Paul and my parents bought me a new full frame camera body (our old camera is a crop body and was actually my wedding gift to Paul) and with Christmas money from my Grandma, I bought a new lens (85mm) for outdoor family photography. The new camera body has proven to be worth the money. The quality of my photographs has been considerably different and much more sharp.

Sitting area for moms to feed and change baby during newborn photo sessions

My studio backdrop area

The logo and infant posing bean bag

After sanding the closet ceiling!

In November, I was voted as the new Co-Leader (like a President) of my mom’s group and non-profit organization More Than Moms. I have been on and off the board of directors over the past few years between the kids. I have said on numerous occasions that joining this group has completely changed my life in Cleveland and that continues to be the case. I have built amazing friendships and work/professional relationships. As a whole, the group is the perfect support for any mom. I can only hope that I can help continue to allow the group to thrive and help other mom’s.  Speaking of mom’s, we have a new mommy (and daddy) in our family. In November Paul’s brother Jason and wife Mira welcomed an adorable baby girl, Morgan. She is cute as a button. Although we have not been able to meet her yet (they live out of state), I love seeing all of her pictures. She is a perfect blend of her parents and has lots of dark hair. We look forward to being able to meet her someday!

More Than Moms Christmas Party

I close this blog post with some sad news. This fall we had to say goodbye to the “Lady of the house,” our cat Chloe. For more than a year, she had developed the symptoms of early kidney failure. She had steadily lost weight (from 12 to 6 or so pounds), ate less and less and started going outside of her little box. As the year went by, we had to confine her (and Willis) to the basement in the evenings and when we left the house because her accidents had become too frequent. Luckily, I am home with the kids all day long so she spent lots of time with us and I was able to catch her when she needed re-directed to her box. All of sudden in a short couple of days she stopped jumping over the baby gates, stopped eating and hid under our couch and in our closet. We had to make the very difficult decision to put her down. I had never experienced anything like that before. Growing up on a farm, I didn’t grow attached to my animals (knowing the facts of life) and I certainly didn’t ever have to watch one pass away. It was far more heart breaking than I ever imagined. I was snorting, sobbing crying in the veterinary office with Paul, as we said our last goodbyes and give her a final caress. She and I had a love/hate relationship. I would often get very irritated with her because she had a bit of a sassy temper and would pee on our rugs when she was not happy with us for one reason or another. I really truly loved her though. I have extremely fond memories of her, one being that she was the one who presented me with my engagement ring on her collar, as Paul proposed to me after dinner in our dining room. She will forever hold that piece of my heart and the sorrow I felt for her when she passed is not a pain that I would ever like to experience again. Paul decided that she will remain with us and she’s buried in our backyard in Lakewood where we can visit with her and remind the kids of their once beautiful companion. In the end, a good thing came out of her loss of life. Willis has become more friendly with the kids now. While Chloe was alive, he never let any of them touch him. Now, he might not be very fond of it but he tolerates them giving him random attention (a tug at his tail or ears and a rub on his head) when they walk by.

A tribute or two to Chloe

One of her last photos

Paul on the way downtown to watch the Indians in the World Series Game 2

When mom has her car at work and forget to leave the kids coats and shoes!

These 3 amigos are always in cahoots

 

Time to soudle!