Clara and Nina still have somewhat of a tenuous relationship. It’s great for a while and then all of the sudden goes bad quickly (hitting, occasional biting, eye poking). But it’s getting better. The good, sweet times are definitely outweighing the bad. It is a constant prayer of ours that they will be great friends. My sisters truly are my best friends, and I pray that will be true for them as well!
Nana and Pops came to see us in March. It is always so nice to have them here! Pops met Nina for the first time, and Nana saw how much she had changed in just a few months. It was so great to see them and their help was greatly appreciated! Pops seems to have endless energy when it comes to playing with his grandchildren. Clara loved it!
We took them to several of our regular places– the Children’s Museum, the zoo, brunch at Liberty Market– but also some new things like a spring training game at Salt River Fields and Wildlife World Zoo!
Please come back again soon! We love you two!
Whew… Nina is already 5 months old! It has gone quickly and slowly. You know? We are so thankful for our little Nina.
Two Months 
Three Months
Four Months
Five Months
Growing
Nina has consistently been around the 50% percentile for weight and height. She has just started wearing 6 month clothes. She seems so cute and chunky to us after our petite Clara!
Eating + sleeping
Nina is such a content baby for the most part. She is a great eater. We still have been unable to get her to take a bottle, which is probably mostly our fault due to lack of trying. She sleeps through the night and has now for a while. We are definitely blessed!
Doing
Nina has been rolling all over the place for the last month. She gets where she wants to go pretty effectively. Maybe that’s a second child thing? In the last few days, I have caught her doing an army type crawl straight to a toy that she is eyeing. It is slow, but she is doing it!
Saying
Not much to report yet but she is babbling a lot now. She seems to really enjoy “chatting” with us.
Loving
Nina loves her sister. She just smiles at her, and Clara gets her laughing the most. She freely gives out smiles to Jeff and me as well.
Once again, I cannot keep up on the blog so here is a quick recap. We were able to spend time with several friends at the beginning of the year that we do not get to see often enough. What a huge blessing! We miss so many of our dear Tucson friends and feel so at home when we are with them.
Clara just loved “Miss Natawee” and Liam. It was so good to see them for a few days!
David, ErinStacy, and Asher came by while they were in town. I wish we had gotten a picture of everyone but made David and Jeff quickly smile for the camera before they left. It was our first time to meet sweet Asher!
Jeff took a few days off in January, and we went to Mt Lemmon. It was so nice to get away and stay in a cozy cabin! It snowed the previous weekend, so there was still plenty on the mountain. Clara had the best time playing in it and even got new boots just for the snow. This was her first real snow experience.
Nina seemed to enjoy the cabin as well. It was a great opportunity for her to wear the “magic snowsuit.” After Clara wore it while we visited Natalie and Liam in Alexandria at about 5 months and slept for around 6 hours straight while we wandered the town, we decided it was magic. It seemed to be pretty magical for Nina as well.
Nick and Betsy visited while we were at the cabin, and we were able to see Silas and meet Amelia! Amelia and Nina are only a few days apart and hopefully will be great friends!
Here are some one month pictures of Nina. I am trying to meet my goal of taking pictures monthly– even with the second child! I am a second child… so I feel the need to make sure that Nina’s first year is well documented.
Nina had her one month appointment on the day after Christmas and was in the 75th percentile for weight and 85th percentile for height. 9lbs 15oz and 22in
I recently dropped our camera and broke our lens that I love so hopefully we can replace it soon!
These last few were taken by Jenn Hydeman at Babymoon just before Christmas. Thank you Jen! Of course, they were so kind to include Clara as well. We even got a candid shot of Clara working in the office with Nina looking on. This was a common occurrence as we went to many visits during this pregnancy, and Clara just made herself right at home.
I have to admit, Thanksgiving and Christmas were a little hazy this year. Nina was born just two days before Thanksgiving. So we just stayed at home, and Jeff and Nana made us a great meal.
We tried to do some festive things since this was the first Christmas we spent in Arizona. We’ve always been grad students or in between jobs and had the time to go back to Mississippi. Not this year and definitely not with a one month old baby! We saw lots of Christmas lights and put up our Christmas tree. Clara loved the tree. She would sit in front of it and just talk about the ornaments– “Mom, will you look at the ornaments with me?” “this one is pretty and glittery” “Which one is your favorite?”
Making a present tower of course…
The Children’s Museum trucked in 20 tons of snow so we went for the day to check it out. It’s Phoenix and it was drizzly, so when we got there only an hour after the museum opened, there was just a small pile of snow in the parking lot that was overrun with kids. Clara was unimpressed. She loves the museum though, so the outing was still a hit.
We tried to sleep…
We went to Zoolights again…
We played outside under our orange tree in the frigid Phoenix winter temperatures…
We went to our church on Christmas Eve and then had dinner at a friend’s house. We spent Christmas morning with just our family of four. We opened presents, read the Christmas story, and made cupcakes for Jesus’ Birthday. We are still trying to work out our own family’s traditions! We went to dinner at another friend’s house that evening. We are thankful for friends here!
Nina joined our family at 9:40am on November 25, 2014.
Nina’s due date was the 22nd, and Nana arrived on the 19th to help out and hopefully be here for Nina’s birth. Clara and I had been making numerous trips to the zoo to keep moving and hopefully help Nina along. Nana joined us for zoo trips and an outing to the children’s museum. Over this week, I started to have some signs of labor and thought it could be the real thing a few times but nothing ever progressed. Jeff and I went to an ultrasound appointment on Friday the 21st to check Nina’s growth. Nina looked great and was estimated to weigh around 7.5lbs. The midwives also guessed around that weight at my last appointment. I still didn’t really believe that Nina could weigh that much as Clara was only 6lbs 11oz. We also saw our first glimpse of Nina’s chubby cheeks from my side of the family.
We spent the weekend finishing house projects and trying to make sure everything was ready for Nina’s arrival. Saturday came and went with no real signs of labor. Our church had a 10 year celebration on Sunday evening at the downtown church plant. We RSVP’d yes even though that was a day past the due date. Jeff fully expected that Nina would be late and had his bet on the 24th. So, we all went to the evening church service. The church plant meets in a beautiful Methodist church in downtown. It was special to worship in such a lovely place and with a large group of believers. After attending a church that meets in an office building, this was almost magical. Jeff and I purchased some raspberry leaf tea after the ultrasound on Friday since Jeff just knew that Nina would be late. I started drinking some on Sunday to see if it would help start labor.
Nana, Clara, and I spent Monday at the zoo doing lots of walking. The Phoenix zoo is big and even has hills– not an easy thing to find around here. I started seeing more signs that labor might be near but tried not to get my hopes up too much. Jeff decided to go ahead and take off this week and spent Monday getting some house work accomplished while he still had time. I had some contractions that evening but not unlike I had experienced some evenings before.
I woke up at 2:30 am the next morning, Tuesday the 25th, and knew that this was it. I was having consistent, fairly strong contractions about 3 minutes apart. I woke Jeff up around 3 because it seemed to be going fairly quickly. He rushed around getting everything ready to go. Soon I needed his help to get through contractions. We used a makeshift rebozo which we learned about this time in our birth class, tried the bath tub, employed a hot water bottle, and even attempted distraction in the form of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on Netflix. Some tactics worked better than others. I have an acute sense of smell even when not pregnant that is even more heightened when pregnant. The rubber smell of the hot water bottle was just too much. I had two vomiting episodes, which was new to me this labor. All of this laboring happened while Clara was snoozing (thankfully) and Nana was attempting to sleep in our improvised guest room in the playroom. We called the midwife around 5 to check in and decided to wait a few more hours before heading to the birth center if possible. Around 7, we called again and planned to head downtown soon and meet the midwife on call. My water broke just before we left. At that point, we knew that we needed to get to the birth center pretty quickly. Upon arriving at the birth center around 8, I was ready to push, and Nina was born less than 2 hours later. Jeff helped cut the cord and after breastfeeding, Nina weighed in at 8lbs 5oz and 20 1/4 in long. We were shocked! A baby over 8lbs? So much bigger than our little Clara!
So, about a 7 hour labor. Yes! Much shorter than with Clara! Overall, things went pretty smoothly, and we were happy with our decision to have Nina at Babymoon. Jeff was a huge support throughout. I am thankful for a husband that is supportive of natural birth and loves me well. Most importantly, we were overjoyed and thankful for our Heavenly Father who blessed us with our precious daughter. This pregnancy has been a big reminder of God’s sovereignty over our lives as well as his care and love for us. We felt that during her birth as well. I was able to be calm in the midst of it knowing that Jesus is Lord over all and as Clara would say, “Jesus always wins.” Nina has been prayed over so much this pregnancy and her birth was bathed in prayer as well.
Nana brought Clara to the birth center a few hours after Nina’s birth. It was so special to see Clara meet Nina for the first time. Clara was excited to see her new little sister! A HUGE thank you to Nana for helping with Clara and helping our household continue to function! My mom is so gracious and giving and a huge blessing to our family. We left the birth center around 1:30pm that afternoon– only about 4 hours after Nina’s birth!
On Friday, when Nina was just 3 days old, Jeff noticed that she felt a little warm, took her temperature, and discovered that she had a fever. We then were caught up in a whirlwind of an ER visit, admission to Phoenix Children’s Hospital, and numerous tests. Apparently, there is a protocol for children under a month with a fever, and it is not fun. The results of the test take 48 hours to come back fully, so we spent the weekend at the hospital. Thankfully, Nana was still here and able to watch Clara while Jeff and I stayed with Nina. We were relieved when all of the tests came back negative, and we were able to go home. It was just a viral thing after all. Although it was a rough experience, we really saw God’s hand in it and were so thankful to have her home once again! We have new insight into the difficulties many of our friends have faced with children in the NICU, and we were only there for a few days.
Here are some highlights of our Fall 2014.
Picnic in the backyard
Cheering on Mississippi State. It was a great season! Although it did not end quite as we hoped, it sure was exciting!
We visited Schnepf Farms again this year with some friends. It was fun to see how much more Clara enjoyed it this time! We spent some time at the petting zoo, saw a dog show and pig races, and picked out pumpkins to take home and carve (a huge hit with Clara). Just to give you a picture of our very verbal toddler– on the way home from the farm, Clara said, “a donkey licked it” while holding her shoe. She then took her shoe off, smelled it, and said, “See, it smells like a donkey.” Nice, Clara.
Clara spent her first night in her new big kid bed when we got home from Schnepf Farms. We have the bunk beds that Jeff slept in for most of his childhood– really fun! She did well but was just a little concerned about the new bed and the dark. She went to sleep pretty quickly though and slept through the night!
Clara’s first time carving a pumpkin. She told us it was too slimy and let Jeff do most of it.
Clara was a cat for Halloween for the second year in a row. This costume was given to her by Nana and Pops last year to carry on the tradition because I loved my cat costume as a kid and wore it year after year. Too bad we don’t still have the original but her new one is super cute! We spent the night before Halloween with friends and decided to let Clara trick-or-treat to just a few of our neighbors and hand out candy on the actual night. At the first house, she was already a little iffy with the creepy decorations. By the time we made it to the second house, she was telling me that she did not want to knock on the door. As we made our way down the street, we ran into a little boy in a full Godzilla costume, and Clara lost it. I think this started her saying, “I’m scared of the alligator” and turned into an imaginary alligator that is sometimes in our house. She likes to pretend but then seems to actually get a little scared sometimes.
Some things that you might hear Clara say about the alligator:
– “I’m hiding my feet (blanket over them) so the alligator can’t get me.”
– “It’s not an alligator… it’s just a deer.”
– “Alligators are not nice.”
– “It’s just outside with Walcott” or “It’s far away at the zoo”
After the Godzilla incident, we came home and handed out candy until a dad dressed as a creepy clown ended the night for Clara.
Around the house…
One of Clara’s favorite things– spending the day in her pajamas. She is getting a lot better at entertaining herself. Here she told me that she was setting her people up for a parade.
Jeff, Clara, and I visited the wildlife park Out of Africa at the end of September. We bought tickets at a deal and wanted to get in a visit before a new baby joined the family. It was about a two hour drive north to Camp Verde from Phoenix. We got out of town early and made it for the first safari ride of the day. They have a large, enclosed preserve where you can get up close to lots of animals! It was much cooler than I think we expected. We were given celery to feed the giraffes, and one came right up to the bus and stuck his head in. Clara held the celery in her mouth and got a nice giraffe kiss! We pet a huge snake, a cavy, and a crocodile monitor and saw many other animals pretty close up (tigers, lions, hyenas…). Definitely worth the trip!
Just a glimpse into the happenings around our house. These were taken in August and September and are just making it to the blog. Clara has a very active imagination, and it’s really fun to see her enjoying pretend play. She is a fan of making dinner and eating at her table in the playroom. Also pictured are “trips” to various places where the stroller, baby Navy (name given by Clara), and a purse are essentials.
