Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter!

Well, this was a good Easter for the kids. I heard the girls this morning at about 6:30 downstairs SO excited about what the Easter "Bunny" had brought them. Having church at 9:00 though, we had to wait until after church to "find" the eggs that were hidden.

I think these are my favorite dresses that they have gotten for Easter. They looked SO cute today. CJ looked like Alice in Wonderland and I LOVE the little jacket for Avary's dress.

Reed looked pretty studly himself. This was his first Easter, and he had a good day. Even Jersey had a good Easter:

We gave her the ham bone from our ham tonight. Her eyes roll back in her head when she gets ham. It is actually quite amusing. At one point her eyes were closed, she was laying down, and she was licking the marrow out of the bone. She got pretty deep in there too.

It was a good day. I had the lesson in Young Women's and I think it was pretty successful. I cried through the whole thing and I got other people crying too, I consider that successful.

Happy Easter everyone!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

8 Years Old

Well, it has finally arrived. Our Cynthia Jo is 8 years old. Holy cow!! Where did it all go??!! It was a little bit of a rough birthday for the rest of us. We had a virus going through the house, but luckily CJ snapped out of it for her birthday so it was a happy one for her.

I was thinking about how I should decorate her cake. As I thought about it I just couldn't come up with an idea, so I asked her if she wanted to decorate her own cake this year. She was SO excited! Her eyes lit up and she got the biggest smile on her face and said "YES!" All I had to do was bake the cake and she did the rest.

Here is an up close picture of the finished product:

She chose strawberry cake, which the grown ups in the house weren't too excited about, but she loved it. And to tell you the truth, the cake gets better the more you eat it, especially with lots of vanilla ice cream. Anyway, she was so proud of her cake and I was so proud of her.

She got some really nice things for her birthday, but the one she was excited about most was her Barbie head. She wanted a Barbie head so that she could practice doing hair, like braids and such. She was SO happy when she opened that, never mind her constant assumptions that that was what she was getting. She also got some chapter books for her to start reading. We figure we need to get a jump on those now since she will be in 3rd grade in August. She also got a really pretty necklace from her Grandma and Grandpa Schumann along with some candy and it was all in a neat mailbox that they dolled up. She had a great birthday!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Spencer Reed Burdett Schumann

Well, he made it here and I'm finally blogging about it. It has been quite a whirlwind getting used to 3 kids! We named him Spencer Reed Burdett, but he is going by Reed. A little complicated we know, but It sure suits him, and it seems right. Reed is from my side of the family. My grandpa, my mom's dad, was Reed. Burdett was Spencer's mom's dad. Seeing how this could be our only boy, it seemed appropriate.

Here is the story of how he came into the world:

I had been put on bed rest the day before, Monday the 21st, because my blood pressure was really high. I wasn't happy at ALL when she did that! I was hoping the doctor would induce me then, but she wanted to run the tests first to see if I had eclampsia (toxemia). I went home in tears and went straight to bed. My water broke at 1:00 am Tuesday, March 22, 2011. (Now I understand what they mean by "gush".) We called the doctor, our doula, and woke up mom, then went to the hospital. We got there around 2:00 am. The hospital is only a 10 minute drive from our house so it wasn't quite a rush to get there. When we got there, I wouldn't really say that I was having contractions. Not any that I could really feel anyway, so we walked around the delivery floor (not really big, but the room was GINORMOUS!) We did that for about an hour and then I got pretty tired and wanted to rest. I think we stopped walking at about 4ish, 5ish. I laid down and I started to feel more contractions, not too bad though. My doctor got there around 7:45 that morning and they checked me at about 8, I was dilated to a 5, but my cervix was still far back. They wanted me to walk some more to see if I could bring my cervix forward, but right then my contractions boosted quite a bit and I wasn't going anywhere, according to me and I was the boss at that point. At around 9:15 I felt like I needed to push. (This is all non drugged, by the way.) The doctor came in around 9:25 am and I started to push. He was born at 9:31 am March 22, 2011. What an experience, ALL natural. Probably wouldn't do it again, if I were to have more kids, but then again it is still REALLY fresh in my mind. I really couldn't have done it without the team work of Spencer and our doula Kristy. When he was born I looked at Spencer and he had tears streaming down his face and I had a rush of emotion myself.

He was so alert when they put him on my belly. They kept him there for quite a while, it was really nice. I was bleeding quite a bit after the birth, so they had to put me on pitocin to make me clot. He weighed 7 lbs. 2 oz. Was 20 1/2" long and perfect beyond belief. We are so glad he is here. As you can see by the picture above, the girls are QUITE in love with him. They came and visited that day after they were out of school. They are such great big sisters. They have been helping out a lot and I'm so proud of them. The dog on the other hand is quite jealous because she doesn't get as much attention from me anymore and she is starting to act out, didn't see that one coming. We were able to come home the next day, which was really nice. It felt good to bring him home. During his exam that day they realized that he was tongue tied and they made an appointment to have that clipped on our way home. He had also had his circumcision that day, so it was a rough day for him. He kinda went into shut down mode. Poor guy. The tongue clipping went rough. He bled quite a bit and was NOT happy about it. I'm glad that is all over though. On the other hand, he did REALLY good during the circumcision, the doctor and nurse were really impressed with his high pain tolerance.

His cry is so unique. We had heard it somewhere before and we didn't figure it out until a couple days ago. We knew it sounded like a bird, but we couldn't figure out which one...until now. What do you think?



Here are some of our favorite snapshots so far of him:

This was his coming home outfit...the shoes BARELY fit him because his feet are SO big!

Speaking of his feet.....

...we measured and they are ACTUALLY 3 1/4 inches long! I knew the SECOND I saw them what was hurting and where when I was pregnant with him.

Thursday morning...our little bur-Reed-o. He LOVES to be wrapped....TIGHT! Reminds me of my niece, Myriah, when she was a baby.



His first sponge bath. He had peed all over himself because we have had to put Vaseline in his diapers because of his circumcision, to make sure it didn't stick to the diaper. For a little bit we were putting too much in and thus the peeing on himself. I think it happened 3 times that day.

After his first sponge bath. His shirt says "Daddy's best friend". I think Spencer is a little happy about having a boy.

Wednesday morning while I was still at the hospital, I got a phone call on my cell phone from the school. CJ was throwing up at school, so I had to call my mom to go pick her up. Of course about an hour later we found out we were going home that day. The next day, Thursday she had to stay home again. Her friend, Corinne, from school and church made her this cute little "get well" card:
It says, "FEEL BETTER CJ! You are such a cute "nerds"! You "snickers" alot. Feel better and travel through the "milky way". You will "burst" with excitement as you eat all of this candy. You are a juicy and "gum"y friend to me. From: Corinne". Apparently she did it all by herself, and CJ just LOVED it. She still hasn't eaten her candy though.

Our Primary music leader had a baby last year. I had offered to make her shower cake, but when it was time for her shower I got REALLY sick and I couldn't. So, to make it up to her I offered to make her son's first birthday cake, which was this past week (yes, a week after Reed was born). I mustered up ALL the energy I had and made the cake. It turned out REALLY cute.

My last cake for a little while though....I was EXHAUSTED afterward.

Yesterday we had our pictures taken (coming soon) and afterward we took just the girls out on a little date while Reed stayed with Geewah, to this frozen yogurt place called Yogurt Land. SO YUMMY!!! There is one in Utah for all those in Utah, by the way. Trust me.....YUM! Anyway, afterward we came home and the girls wanted to play with their make up. Sure why not, right?

Um......ya. Avary was actually starting to scare me. After the picture was taken I had Spencer go and wash their faces.....scary.

Well, that is it for now. The pictures coming are WAY cute, wait till you all see them!!! I'm REALLY excited.