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.

Lily Joy Rhine!

 Rachel has always liked her princess slippers, but recently taken a liking to sleeping in them.

So here is the story of Lily's birth: I had my doctor's appointment on Thursday afternoon and was only about 1.5 to 2 cm dilated and didn't really expect much since I hadn't been having any regular contractions. Mom and I went for a walk that evening, but my contractions stopped when I sat down. So, around 12:30 am, I woke up having some contractions and decided to start timing them for a few hours. I decided to pack a bag and then woke Matt up to let him in on that. He was slightly confused and then kind of snapped to it. We dropped off Rachel with my parents and headed to the hospital. I was really hoping they weren't going to send me home and when I found out that I was up to 4 cm, I knew they would keep me. We headed over to labor and delivery around 4:30  and my contractions never really started hurting much. I was still at 4 cm hours later. My doctor broke my water and they started the pitocin rather strongly. It kicked in quickly and the painful contractions were coming strong. I soon wanted no visitors and my epidural immediately. Unfortunately, it took over an hour to come and then another 15 or so minutes to complete it. I couldn't wait for my immediate relief (like I had with Rachel) and was greatly disappointed when it didn't come. Fortunately, I dialated from 7 to 10 in a matter of minutes and my nurse gave me the good news that we could start pushing. We had no time to tell anyone that I had progressed to this point, so no one expected a baby so soon. I pushed for about 15 minutes. This was the only part of the labor and delievery that was mostly pain free because the epidural finally kicked in. Matt got to assist in the delievery and then cut the cord. We have no pictures of the delivery or right afterwards because our camera was in the car still and we hadn't had time to go out and get it between the contractions and quick moving labor. So, all of the pictures are of people who visited holding her. Sorry, I wish we had more. She was born at 11:13 am, 8 lb 2 oz, and 19 inches long. She looks a lot like Rachel with her dark hair, but not as much as Rachel. I am thankful that she was 8 days early and so happy to have her in our family!

 Rachel was very blessed to get many little gifts along with Lily. Thanks to everyone who visited and brought us things. We enjoy sharing Lily with our friends and family.

 

 Rachel taking a random nap  in a weird spot.

 Lily's first bottle. She took it well.

Girl Time at the Park!

 I had been telling Rachel that we would go to the park for the past few days and today I kept my word. We made a last minute call to Lauren and invited them too. The weather was beautiful and breezy and so we were out there for about 2.5 hours and even had a picnic lunch. The favorite of the older girls were the swings, but unfortunately, they all still need to be pushed and it was rather difficult for me to push all 3 of them while Lauren watched Reagan to make sure she didn't walk in front of the swings. So, they were forced to run around for most of the time.

 What cute pictures of Kate and Hannah!

 This was me trying to get Rachel to give me a decent smile. Then I asked her to smile better and I got the one below.

 Reagan had a lot of fun running around with the big kids too!

Boktoberfest!

 Mom, Dad, the 4 girls, and I went to Boktoberfest at Bok Tower this past Saturday. We went last year and had a good time, so we decided to bring the Lantz girls this year. They older 3 got their faces painted like butterflies, we ate some greasy food, fed the big fish, and rolled around in the grass.

 Hannah wouldn't stop looking in the mirror at her new face to stop for an individual picture.

 We were trying to get a picture of all 4 of them, but we had just gotten Reagan out of her stroller and she was having none of sitting still for any number of seconds.

We have been busy the past few weeks, but with nothing incredibly interesting or picture worthy. Our church has an annual Global Outreach Celebration where missionaries come in from all over the world for share about what they are doing. We housed one for about 5 days, but our Sunday School class was assigned a different one. Matt and I got to spend a good amount of time with him and hear about the work he does. We were both personally challenged to get out of our comfort zone and perhaps go places (short-term) that we wouldn't normally consider. It looks like I will get to go on my first missions trip in June 2013. And no, I am not going to Kentucky with Matt, but it will probably be the same week he does to build a church. The trip is only for about 4 days and is up in Michigan. Matt is possibly looking into going overseas for a 10 day trip, but we will see about what God has planned for our family this coming year.

My pregnancy is going well still. I am very ready for this baby to arrive, but am having no regular contractions. The baby is head down, so I am just trying to stay busy and active to pass the time. I have another appointment on Thursday and they are going to check me at this one, so perhaps I will have some good news to report.