Big things

Having 3 kids 2yrs and under is a handful! The twins were barely 2 when Matthew was born and I thought it would be a great time to add another baby to the family. It was perfect for our family but it is a lot of little babies. I wish there were more hours in the day. There are many things I would do with those hours but one of them would definitely be blogging. So many amazing, funny, big things happen every day. Ok well you may not see them as big things, but to me they are. I saw a quote in the store today. Matthew was asleep in his car seat and I was pushing it in a shopping cart through the grocery store chasing Emma and Addie who were pushing their own mini shopping carts around trying to sneak as many things into their tiny carts as possible.

Anyways, I was hurrying through the store trying not to create too much of a scene and there was a quote that caught my eye. It read "Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things". I realize this is very true. There are little moments in every day that are so important. It is such a blessing to be a mother to 3 sweet wonderful children. It is A LOT of work with them all being so young, but it is so wonderful. Some days, yes, I want to pull my hair out! I want to crawl in a corner and cry. Some days are overwhelming and I am pretty sure without the help of all of my wonderful family I wouldn't have made it this far. BUT, even when all three kids have been screaming for an hour or the twins won't stop fighting or Matthew refuses to sleep no matter how tired he is, or how many times they empty all the Q-Tips all over the bathroom, no matter how many things they shove into the toilet, or how much vaseline the twins spread all over the living room and themselves, or how many bottles of Medicine Adelyn empties out (did I mention that was all in one week?). Anyways, no matter how hard things get it is all made up for when Emma says "Mom, look at me dance" and then proceeds to show me the funniest dance moves I've ever seen, or when Adelyn mimics me and matthew and she swaddles her baby doll and sings it sweet lullabies, or when my sweet baby boy gives me one of his million dollar smiles as he sees me walk into his room after he wakes up, and best of all when I hear the sweetest little voices say "ove ewe mommy" as I'm leaving thier room after I've tucked them into bed. I'm sure every parent can relate to this. These "small" moments are so wonderful and such big moments to me. I wish I had more time to blog about them or at least write them down so I don't forget them. I do take a lot of pictures so I guess for now the pictures will have to tell the stories for me.

After Matthew was born the girls quickly learned they were getting less of my attention and oh boy did they have a big adjustment. For about the first 4 months they were little sneaky mess makers when I was tied up with Matthew. They have gotten a lot better at keeping the rules and not making such HUGE messes. The following picots were all ONE day, more specifically in ONE hour! While I was feeding Matthew I could hear them in their bathroom and this is what I found.

 Yes, Matthew uses the girls' old pink bathtub and he likes it! Also, notice how they emptied the entire bag of hair bows and hair accessories many of them made it into the toilet :(

 I got them dressed and sent them outside to play in the backyard while I cleaned up that mess but instead they went into my bathroom while I was cleaning up their bathroom... Yeah.... ok, this might make me a bad mom, but when I went into my bathroom and saw the mess they had made the first thing I saw was Addie using my deodorant as chap stick hahaha so of course I took a picture before I stopped her from doing that. I know totally gross and like I said that might make me a bad mom.

 I took the deodorant away and she picked up some nursing pads and I guess she watches me a lot because she knows exactly how they work. :)

 The next day while I was feeding Matthew they took the cereal outside for a snack but instead of eating it they dumped the entire (new) box out all over the lawn.

In the same week they emptied an entire new big jar of vaseline all over themselves and the living room and they caked it all over their little couch. Adele's favorite activity that month was finding Mattews medicine and dumping it out. I lost count of how many bottles of medicine she dumped out. Mostly just gas drops but once she even dumped out his antibiotics he had just started taking. They took their diapers off one day during nap time and pooped on the ground and then used their poop to paint the wall in their room. Don't even get me started on all their poop stories. I have cleaned up WAY more poop then one person should ever have to. Like I said, it was a bit of adjustment and it is getting easier to laugh instead of cringe at all of these stories.
This week they got into coloring. They found where I hid the markers and while I was on the phone they had a BLAST in their room. I was so proud of how well they were playing in their room and not fighting. Then Emma came in and told me Adelyn colored on her so I went to see what Adelyn was up to. This is what I found.

Luckily I only have washable markers so I made them clean it up.

 Today I left emma to flush the toilet by herself. BIG mistake. She was in the bathroom for a long time so I went in to check on her and she had stuffed half a jumbo roll of toilet paper in the toilet and all over the ground. I made her clean up this mess too. She was very disgusted when I made her reach in and get all the toilet paper out of the toilet and put it in the garbage can.

All of the misbehaving has far been made up for with all the cute things they do. I love what good friends Emma and Addie are to each other. They genuinely like playing with each other and they watch out for each other. One day they were outside playing and I hadn't heard them for a while so I went out to find them and they were sitting at the side of the house next to each other just talking to each other and kicking wood chips.

Emma left, Addie right

 Love my silly little girls!

Emma left, Addie right

Addie Left, Emma right

Emma is just like her momma and she has a serious chocolate addiction. She snuck into some chocolate and then she came to me looking like this and asked "More Chocolate Pwease?"

This Girl! (Addie) She is so silly. She dressed up with Matthews onesie on her head and his socks on her hands.

I love having twins! Their bond is so close and I love watching their friendship develop.

 This is their favorite way to take a bath (for about 3 min before they want to splash). They LOVE their little brother! They are the best big sisters! Matthew has outgrown his bath tub now and he LVOES taking a bath with his sisters and splashing them. They squeal and he just laughs. Its a lot of fun!

 Before it got SUPER cold going on walks kept my sanity. All the kids loved it and it gave me a break from the girls' constantly making messes in the house.

 Even now that it is super cold we still bundle up and go for walks when the sun comes out.

 Matthew even enjoys bundling up and getting some fresh air. No judgements on my lack of make up or doing my hair. There really is no time for that some days so I just go the natural way :)

 We are very excited that it is almost spring! The girls have decided that they will not go outside to play unless they have their sun glasses.

  They don't get much sweeter then when they are asleep.  My sweet little Emma always sleeps with her little hands tucked under her face like this.

We LOVE when we get to take trips to St. George. Its a 5 hour car ride form our house to St. George  and with kids it usually is closer to 6. But, we LOVE LOVE LOVE visiting there and escaping the bitter cold.

Adeline having fun playing with cousin Alexa

 We enjoy playing at the park with cousins! Having older cousins to show the girls around the playground is a lot of fun. It gets the girls out of their shells and helps them to do things they would normally be too afraid to do on their own.

Adelyn and Alexa - They are such good friends

Emma

Adelyn

What little kid doesn't love a big pile of leaves?

Adelyn in bright pink, Emma in light pink

 My sweet Emma girl is getting so big! She had a lot of fun helping Grandma decorate for Christmas. She really liked Grandpas silver tree.

While we were helping Grandma decorate for Christmas Adelyn fell and hit her head on a glass table. It swelled up pretty quickly and it was cut. Since it was so swollen the cut looked really deep so I took her to instacare to see if she needed stiches. Needless to say while we were waiting for a little over an hour the swelling went down and it was clear she did not need stitches just a band aid. But she did get a big black eye that made her look pretty tough.

Having a 2 year old wait for over an hour in the waiting room was not so fun for her. So we made funny faces while we waited. She loves to take pictures of herself and then look at them. 

After our selfie session at the insta care Adelyn has become obsessed with doing selfies together. It is one of her favorite things to do. Here is one more selfie of the two of us from a month or two ago. 

Potty training twins is A LOT of work! Aaaahhhh! I wish there was a place I could send them and have them come back potty trained. I tried when the girls were about 20 months and it was clear they were not ready and I was about 6 months pregnant so it just wasn't working. I decided to wait until after Matthew was born. I tried again in September. Adelyn got it on day 1. She has been amazing ever since, but Emma, oh Emma... She knows how but she just gets too busy and forgets. It has been a long 6 months but we have finally made it to 100% potty trained!!! 

Here are some pictures from when we started potty training in September. 

They colored posters to put stickers on when they used the potty.

 We put the posters by their potties so they could see them and hopefully motivate them.

 They had a lot of fun putting the underwear on their heads. Where do they come up with this stuff?

 And then right away Adelyn went pee in the potty and got a sticker to put on her poster. Shortly after that Emma pulled Adelyns poster down and pooped on it. Yes her potty was RIGHT THERE! But alas she pooped on the poster right next to the potty.

 This is how they like to go potty now. Adelyn likes to use the "big" potty and Emma still prefers the little one.

The holidays are so much fun with kids! Here are some pictures of Halloween. Adelyn dressed up as Bat Girl and Emma dressed up at Super Girl and Matthew was a giraffe. 

We went to a Halloween carnival at their cousins school. They girls loved every chance they got to dress up in their costumes. 

At halloween I discovered that Emma is quit the little artist. I've known that she loves to color but the girl can paint! Really well :) Here she is painting a pumpkin puppet.

We spent Thanksgiving with Andrews family. His parents have been on a mission so it has been a while since we have all been together for Thanksgiving. It was a lot of people but also a lot of fun. The girls' especially likes making ginger bread houses after dinner and going on a tractor ride.

Cousin Mikayla helped the girls make their ginger bread house

Emma's side

Adelyns side

Cousin Bryton taking most of the kids on a tractor ride

Christmas was also a lot of fun. I didn't take as many pictures as I wish I would have but it was your typical christmas. We stayed home and had Andrews family christmas party a few days before Christmas and we celebrated Christmas with my family down in St. George just after New years.
The twins are terrified of Santa. They aren't afraid of santa. It is a lot worse then that. They scream, cry and shake uncontrollably whenever they think they have to get close to Santa. Lets just say when Santa unexpectadly showed up at the christmas party and walked right by them it was an immediate melt down for both of them. They finally agreed to walk up to Santa to get a present after they saw all of their other cousins sit on his lap and get a present but under no circumstances were willing to sit on his lap.

This was their reaction to seeing Santa at the Stagg family party.

Matthew was indifferent to Santa all though he really liked his beard.

Grandma and Grandpa playing out the nativity with the fisher price nativity set for the children.

This is the first year we have been in a house of our own so we had a lot of fun decorating with lots of lights. Andrews brother Eli came over and helped us hang all the lights up.

 We did a lot of Christmas crafts. Christmas trees and all sorts of different Santa's.

Cousins Alayna and Simon came over one afternoon to play and we made christmas tress

Merry Christmas 2014

There isn't anything quite like having a sweet baby at Christmas time. He is my joy.

By far one our favorite things to do is go to the zoo! The girls like all the animals and there is a carousel that they LOVE! We went several times this fall and we even went once in December to see zoo lights. 

Adelyn -  I can't get enough of this face! She thought the porcupine was pretty cool. 

Emma - Her face! Seriously! I love their facial expressions. She couldn't find the bears.

Emma lovin' the birds

Their favorite part of the zoo is the carousel.

Emma

Addie

Zoo Lights!

cousins

It was COLD!

Andrew and Emma

Adelyn

 Unfortunately we updated our computer a few days ago with a new hard drive so all my pictures are on our external hard drive and I don't know how to get them onto the computer. Once Andrew shows me how I will download the rest of the pictures and finish updating on what we have been up to. Sorry this is such a long post! I will try to post more often so I don't have so much to catch up on. I will leave you with one last picture that pretty much sums up our last 7 months. Pure exhaustion 

Matthew A. Stagg

A lot has happened since I last blogged and I have a lot to catch up on, but one thing stands out more then the rest. We welcomed Matthew Andrew Stagg into our family!

From the beginning of my pregnancy I had 2 major concerns. The first was preterm labor. I had the twins at 32 weeks and I started having preterm labor at 23 weeks. My doctor wasn't sure if the complications I had during my pregnancy with the twins was due to having twins or if it was just how my body was so they kept a close eye on me and I got a lot of ultra sounds during the first half of my pregnancy. At about 23 weeks things were looking good and I wasn't having any problems so any concerns of preterm labor were ruled out. I was pretty sure I would still go early. Not 6 weeks early but probably a week or two. Andrew and I had to move and we had been waiting to hear back from some jobs to see where we were going to move to. I was due July 14th and I was planning on having a baby the beginning of July. As it turns out we moved the first weekend in July to Stansbury, Utah. (A tiny TINY town about 30 min east of Salt Lake off I-80 on your way to Wendover and about 10 min from Tooele where most of Andrews family lives. I wasn't sure I would make it to moving day before having a baby, but I did. I wasn't sure I would survive moving day without having a baby, but I did. The first week of July passed and we were all moved in and no baby... So, I unpacked, decorated my house, ran around chasing the twins, walked, walked and walked some more! I did all I could to try and induce labor. July 14th came and still no baby! I was scheduled to be induced July 16th. July 16th 4:30AM I woke up with some really strong contractions so we drove to the hospital and sure enough I was in labor! I couldn't believe I had made it PASSED my due date. I was certain I would have a baby WAY before my due date. I was very ready to have a baby.

That brings me to my 2nd concern of my pregnancy. Since I had the twins via C-section I was faced with a decisions between having a repeat c-section and having a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). There were risks and bonuses to both. Ultimately I decided to do a VBAC since I wasn't having any of the complications I had with the twins that lead to their c-section. 

Matthews Birth Story:

I got to the hospital at 5:00 AM. I had the nicest little lady for my nurse that day. She had been an L&D nurse for many many years. She was very positive that I was going to have a very smooth labor. I was progressing great and she guessed I would have a baby by late afternoon. Things were going great and I was feeling great once I got the epidural (love me my pain meds!). They had me shifting side to side every couple hours to prevent bed sores. At around noon my nurse had me turn sides. The baby did not like this. His heart rate dropped and didn't pick up right away. The nurse had my switch back and his heart rate quickly went back to normal. My nurse had me stay on that side the rest of the day to prevent the babies heart rate from dropping again. I was assured that if anything were to go wrong they had a smooth protocol of to prepare for a c-section and they could have me from my room to O.R. and delivering a baby all in 5 minutes. I was glad to hear that, but my labor was going so well I didn't expect to have to worry about that. At 3 I was dilated to a 10 and my doctor had come in and given me the go ahead to start pushing. I pushed for an hour and when my doctor came to check on me we found out that the baby was face up so he had me stop pushing and lay in a weird position to try and get the baby to turn. So I laid in a terribly uncomfortable position for a half hour. This awkward position twisted my back. When I laid flat again I was in a great deal of pain. I had twisted my upper back and my shoulder blades were screaming with pain. When they checked me again the baby had turned a little and was part side ways part face up. We decided to start pushing some more. Although the pain in my shoulders was great I pushed for another hour. When my doctor came to check me I hadn't made any progress in the past hour. My doctor was concerned I wasn't making progress, but he agreed to let me push for another hour to see what progress I could make and if I hadn't made good progress he told me we might have to look at other options. What I didn't know at that time, but learned later was that I had been bleeding pretty bad and that was also concerning my doctor, but my doctor knew I really wanted to deliver VBAC and not a c-section so he wanted to give me one more try. So I pushed, and I pushed hard! I did not want a c-section. I pushed with all my might. I pushed twice and on the second push the babies heart rate dropped. My nurse had me turn sides (to the side the baby didn't like earlier). My nurse was hoping the change in position would help the baby to get his heart rate up, but that didn't work. It made it worse so she had me quickly turn back. I expected this to go similar to how it went earlier in the day and I was expecting his heart rate to go back up at any second. I eagerly watched the monitor and the little squiggly line didn't go up. It went down, lower, up a little, but then down further and then the monitor got moved during my movement from side to side and the monitor lost the babies heart rate. The next part of labor is a little blurry. Many people came rushing into the room. The charge nurse was calling my doctor and on call doctor to get into my room. Several nurses and med students came in. I didn't know what was going on and I was trying to wrap my head around what was happening. The nurse gave me a shot and told me the shot was going to stop my contractions, and that's when I knew my hopes of having a vaginal birth were coming to an end. Tears welled up in my eyes as I tried to accept the fact that I wasn't going to be able to deliver my baby. You hear stories of how miraculous it is and how special it is to deliver a baby. I tried to hold back the tears as I accepted the fact that I couldn't do that if I wanted myself and my baby to be safe. I was also trying to hold back tears from being scared out of my mind about the safety of my baby. When I looked at Andrew I could see the fears I was feeling in his eyes and I knew he was scared too. The nurse couldn't find the babies heart rate with the Doppler and I started crying. I don't think I have ever been in so much pain or so scared in my life but at the same time there was a little voice in the back of my head telling me 'its going to be ok. Your baby is ok'. So I tried to just take some deep breaths and push the tears away. I did not know this, but I leaned that they can find the babies heart rate on his head by going vaginally and that is just what they did. They stuck a little wire up there and attached it to his head and found his heart rate. It was still low, but I felt an overwhelming comfort that I knew everything was going to be ok. At that time my doctor got to my room unplugged my bed and all the other cords I was attached to and pushed me out of the room. I could tell by how quickly he was moving that things were not good. He didn't ask the nurses if everything was good to go he just came in unplugged everything and started pushing me towards the O.R. and everyone else followed. I watched the tiles on the ceiling pass quickly by as they rushed me to the O.R. The nurse was right earlier when she told me they could have me ready for a c-section in the O.R. in 5 from the time I started having problems. I don't think it even took that long. Luckily by this time the babies heart rate had gone up a little so my doctor let me lay there for another minute or two to make sure I was completely numb. I was mostly numb from the epidural but I still had some feeling and I could feel the sharp pokes when they tested to see how numb I was. I was glad I was able to take a minute and get 100% numb. At this point the only thing I could focus on was the pain in my back/shoulders. Laying flat on my back had increased the pain ten fold and my whole body had started to shake due to the pain. I kept telling the doctors how bad my back hurt but since it was in my upper back it wasn't getting numb. Luckily the anesthesiologist had compassion on me and gave me a good dose of morphine. They were about ready to start when Andrew walked into the O.R. They had him sit up front by my head. I was really glad he was there to hold my hand and rub my head to distract me fro the pain in my back. I'm not sure when the morphine kicked in and the pain went away but before I knew it I heard the sweet sounds of my precious babies cry. The doctor lifted him above the drape so I could see him before he passed him off to the nurse to get cleaned off. I was super happy to see a full head of dark hair! Andrew went over with the baby while they cleaned him off and assessed him. The babies heart rate and oxygen levels were a little low so they took him to the NICU before I could hold him. I wasn't very happy with that because I had been looking forward to holding him right after birth. When the twins were born they took them to the NICU right after birth as well and I didn't get to hold the girls for a few hours. So I waited to hold my little boy while they stitched me up. A kind nurse went back and forth from the NICU to the O.R. giving me constant updates on how the baby was doing. She told me he was doing well. She told me he was breathing on his own without any assistance so that was a good sign but he was grunting a lot which is a sign of difficulty breathing so they wanted a NICU nurse to check him out just to make sure his low levels of oxygen and heart rate were not a concern. As the doctor stitched me up he told me that while doing the c-section he discovered that the placenta had started to abrupt so it was separating from my uterus and that was what had caused my heavy bleeding when I was pushing. He told me that it had just started to separate and so I was lucky they had made the right choice to do the emergency c-section when they did before it got too bad and put me and the baby in too much danger. By the time I was cleaned up and rolled back onto the hospital bed they brought my sweet little boy all bundled up back to me. I was still shacking quite badly from all the pain I had been through and from the surge of adrenaline and other hormones that had just rushed through me. I remember asking Andrew and the doctors if it was ok for me to be holding the baby since I was shaking so bad. I was afraid I was going to give him shaking baby syndrome. They assured me it would be alright. After talking to Andrew I guess I asked them that a couple of time as they wheeled me back to my room. I don't remember that. I just remember feeling really concerned that I was going to give him shaken baby syndrome while holding him because I was shaking so badly. All in all it was a crazy long day. It took us another day or two to decide on a name but we settled on Matthew Andrew Stagg. He was born July 16th at 6:27pm. Yes, a 14 hour delivery. I Dilated all the way to a 10, pushed 2.5 hours and then ended up having an emergency c-section. Every women's worst nightmare of a delivery! But, I count myself lucky because Matthew and I are both healthy and doing well. He weighed 8lbs 7 oz and was 21 in long. 

Matthew is the happiest baby I have ever known! When he is not sleeping or eating he is usually smiling. He started smiling (more then just gas smiles) at 5 weeks old. He is such a happy little guy he just can't keep it all in. We are all very much in love with him. He tolerates his sisters pretty well, even when Emma fed him a sour patch kids and shoved it in his mouth because she wanted to "share with baby mattew". He didn't even cry he just gagged a little. Having twin 2 year old sisters hasn't been easy for him. They love him so much and he tolerates them.