Sisters!

 Rachel and Lily before church last Sunday. Lily was just over a week old and wasn't too cooperative. However, Rachel smiled pretty good for these two pictures!

 I was just snapping some pictures of Lily in the bouncy seat in an attempt to get one with her eyes open. You can kind of see them, but she is definitely having some more awake time, usually towards the evening and we have been enjoying that. Rachel always gets very excited when Lily's eyes are open.

We went for Lily's 2 week check-up and she looks fantastic or perfect as the doctor says. She now weighs 9 lbs 2 oz, so she gained an entire pound from her birth weight. They are usually just happy with being back up to birth weight at 2 weeks, so she said that I have good milk. She is now 20.25 inches, up from 19 inches at birth. That seemed like a lot to Mom and me, so we think she might have been longer at birth. I definitely could tell that she went through a growth spurt as she wanted to eat more often and clearly she grew. She is a great eater and is doing really well at night with going back to sleep after her feedings. She still gets me up 2 times in the middle of the night, but is going longer between those feedings and I am not giving her as much for the second one in hopes of getting her to stop waking for that one. I am feeling optimistic that in the next week or two she will have dropped that 4-5am feeding. Her cord finally fell off last week, so we were able to keep her in the water while bathing her and she actually seemed content with her bath (versus the first time where she pretty much just screamed). Rachel does pretty good with her and loves to help wake Lily up from her naps. She gets her out of her swaddler or sweater as Rachel calls it. She loves to help gets bibs and burp rags and helped give her a bottle this morning. She is taking to her big sister role very well.

Rachel learned something really helpful this week. She can now pump her legs while swinging and actually keep herself going and go higher! This is a big deal because I feel like I had been trying to teach her this for the past 6 months and having to stand out there and push her is just tiring. She still needs a push to get started, but loves being on the swings. Matt and I are thinking of adding monkey bars to her swingset for Christmas, but we will have to see how much that costs.

Onto the outdoor kids: We lost one of the smaller chickens recently. It was during the daytime, so we think it was a stray cat. Mom and Rachel discovered it and I verified that it was our little Americana. Matt was excited about this chicken because they are supposed to lay the different colored eggs. I guess we will never know. So, we have 3 big ones and 1 smaller one. On a positive note, the black chicken started laying eggs, so some days we get 3. We definitely put these eggs to use as Rachel really likes hard boiled eggs and we all love them in our salads.

Matt has been working quite a bit of overtime, which is a real blessing with me not working. He has been able to get enough overtime to cover what I would have made, if not more. When my Mom was here helping, we visited him at an opening to a You Say When Yogurt shop (which was really good) and he recently worked with Verizon at a heart walk and gaming competition. He does get to do some interesting things and I hope Rachel, Lily, and I are able to make it out to some of his events. If nothing else, we always seem to get free t-shirts.

I am still doing great and feeling good. I am not too tired and manage to squeeze in a few naps during the week. We were very blessed that our Sunday school class brought us meals for two weeks so I didn't have to worry about cooking. That was so nice, but all good things must come to an end, so I am back to cooking once again. I am a little eager to get back to the gym, but I am being good and not doing much exercise. In two weeks, I go to my OB for a follow up visit and hope to get the green light on more strenuous exercise. The gym that I have been going to for so long recently went through some big changes and I don't think I will be working out there any longer. I am really bummed, but the classes I liked are not being replaced with anything too comparable, so I think I will be joining the Y in the next few months. I haven't heard from my department head at school yet, so I do not know what classes I will be teaching, but hope to get my same schedule for 2 classes. I am actually planning a visit up to school tomorrow afternoon so that a few of my co-workers can meet Lily.

To sum it all up, our family of 4 is very blessed!

Some New Pictures!

 For those of you wanting more/closer up pictures of Lily, here are a few for you. We got home from the hospital on Sunday and had my parents and the Lantz family over (they brought us dinner). By choice, I spent the day by myself with Rachel and Lily. Tuesday through Friday, my Mom took off work and helped me out a lot. We ran tons of errands and she helped me catch up on all of the laundry and some cleaning. I totally appreciate it and enjoyed her company and all of the sweets we ate! Despite all of those terrible foods we ate, I am only 11 pounds until my pre-pregnancy weight. I almost thought I might have gained something after our many ice cream outings. Lily is doing pretty good at night. She is sleeping between 3.5 and 4.5 hours straight at night and is usually good about going right back to sleep. She is definitely having more awake time during the day and is very good about all of our trips out. She is a sweet, snuggly, and content baby. Rachel is doing well with her, but we are trying very hard to make sure she gets enough attention too. She loves her sister and gets very excited when her eyes are open. We spent some time outside today and Rachel was flying high in her swing in the front yard.

 Rachel likes when Lily watches TV with her.

I am doing great and have been feeling really good, which was a lot different with how I felt with Rachel. I am adjusting again to how much time feeding a newborn takes, but thankfully she is a good eater (but kind of slow). Some friends are bringing us dinner tonight, so we will be grilling and then lighting a fire for some marshmallows. Don't worry, Lily will not be participating. I will try to be good about updating the blog more often now that I have something new and fun to take pictures of.