The One With Pax's First Bath

Well Paxton's belly button finally fell off.
Okay this was like forever ago. And I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.
But there are some pretty rad pictures that I don't really want to miss out on everyone seeing.
Preslie's button didnt' fall off until she was WELL over six weeks old.
I KNOW!
Disgusting right!
Well Paxton's fell of right before two weeks, which was super awesome cause then we got to get his newborn pictures done, AND he got to take a bath instead of me spongebathing him with wipes.

The One With The Random Thoughts

I have decided that it is MUCH harder to actually think of something to write about when you are no longer pregnant. This is for two different reasons. 1 - because when you're pregnant things are constantly changing that people want updates on - the size of your belly, when you fill kicks and hiccups, how much weight your gaining, how much you hate your doctor this week, and what pictures you can create from the stretchmarks on your stomach. and 2 - your brain, at least my brain, was particularly ranty and ravy and all sorts of crazy (hey - that rhymed) when you are pregnant making your blog highly enjoyable and therefore nothing now will be as utterly awesome to read.

So, in the spirit of this blog really being all about journaling for the family to look back on one day, I figure I should just sit down and write about some of the things that currently take up our time in an effort to see how much we change next year . . . . or next week, whichever one we actually make it it.

SCHOOL:

Eric is currently working on his Masters in Health Administration and Informatics through the University of Phoenix. He chose this concentration when he saw how much someone in that field can get paid . . . okay, maybe that's not the reason HE chose it, but it's the reason I was okay with him tacking on an entire year to his degree and another fifteen grand - you gotta pay all that back somehow. His current class is a marketing class in which the teacher is apparently setting all the students up to fail. The grading rubric goes as follows - you can either get a 100%, 50%, or 25%, but nothing in between. So either you ACE everything, or you fail. Pretty crappy right? Well it gets worse! He started the class with 10 kids in his group to accomplish all the group assignments with. Apparently he is not the only person struggling in the class because every other day he gets notification that another student has dropped the class from his group. As of today, there is him and one other person in his group - the other person has already told him she is in the process of dropping the class. So things could get interesting for him. His job at the University of Phoenix makes it a little easier for him to know how to handle the situation, but it's not helping is grade. He currently has a 70%, which is strange for someone who has a B+ average, and that is the highest grade in the class. I think he's getting excited for this class to be over with and to have the two week breka that comes after.

When we found out that UofP would pay for 80% of my schooling, we decided it was time for me to go back. I'm working on my degree in Health Administration and should be done in October. I am currently in an effective essay writing class and a critical thinking course. I thought the essay writing class would be the hardest as I HATE to write. BOY WAS I WRONG!!!! The essay class involves one large expository essay that we work on for the entire nine weeks. Every week we work on a different aspecet of it - developing a topic, narrowing the field, finding sources, outlining, body paragraphs, intros and conclusions, etc. It really hasn't been so bad, and with only two weeks to go I am maintaining my 100%. Critical thinking? Uh yea, I used to think I overthought EVERYTHING! Clearly I was mistaken. Identifying arguments, deciphering premises and conclusions, analyzing rhetoric and fallacies, grasping deductive versus inductive logic, and the list continues. Who would have thought this class could be SO difficult?!?!?! Didn't help that I had a baby right in the middle of the class, and that two weeks after that I went back to work. Or that I'm sleep deprived. Or that my hair is currently purple. . . . . well my hair isn't really purple, but you see what I'm getting at. NOTHING is helping me accomplish this class. I finally got so fed up a week and a half ago that I emailed the teacher and was just like, "SERIOUSLY!!!! Seriously???? SERIOUSLY!!!!" I really mixed that in with a whole bunch about how much time I spend reviewing the chapters (it takes me AT LEAST four hours to read 15 pages) and how my grade history in this program (HELLO I HAVE A 4.0) clearly indicates that I have the desire and logic to work through things. She responded by telling me that my 85% was the highest in the class. . . . . . hmm. . . . . well that's good I guess, but if you get me dropped from the dean's list I will NOT be happy!

WORK:

Eric is still working for the good old University of Phoenix. Although he doesn't always get off work at his regularly scheduled time (try an hour late EVERY day last week) it is WAY better than when he was working at Sight & Sound before. They are absolutely NOT ALLOWED to work overtime, and when they do, they have to get it approved. So it's nice that when he works overtime during the week, come Friday they are practically kicking him out the door at noon. He's in charge of the Cultural Committe, working on becoming the lead for the Health programs, and can never get a bad review from any of the upper management. The director of the campus has also recently become his best friend. They bond over hunting. Somehow that annoying thing my husband loves to do that takes him away from his family just might be the best thing for our family. For whatever reason, every boss he has LOVES hunting too and they create common ground on it enough that the bosses see all the AMAZING things he does, that do NOT pertain to hunting, at work and put him up for all sorts of leadership opportunities. Leadership opportunities = RAISES! So I'm okay with that. He's also been contacted by a person who trained him when he started about taking over as the trainer for the Idaho campus - this involves a LOT of travel, so I'm not sure I'm too keen on it. We'll see how it goes.

I went back to work about two weeks after Pax was born, I struggle with the down and boring time. It's hard to get ANYWHERE fast with three kids. The amount of stuff I have to pack into the car, and the amount of things I have to do to get out the door is insane. I want to hire a nanny, or a babysitter . . . . . cause the TV as a babysitter thing doesn't ACTUALLY work. I haven't been able to get into the office before 1030 since I went back. It's also hard to accomplish much at work with three kids. By the time the older two get settled, Pax wants to eat, and as soon as he's done with his bottle, Parker and Preslie are ready for lunch. And then it's bottle time, and break up fight time, and restart the movie time, and I really want to watch phinny ferb time, and please get my two year old who somehow climbed on top of a file cabinet and is now stuck down. INSANITY!!! And not the work out people, that is life now. insanity. pure and simple. I love it though. We keep talking about getting Parker into pre-school and Preslie into day care a few days out of the week, but somehow, as crazy as it gets there, I can't imagine work without them. So nothings happened yet.

FAMILY:

Family life with three kids isn't so bad. . . . until you try to do anything. Let me rephrase. Adjusting to three kids wasn't nearly as bad as everyone told me it was going to be. Unless they met that you will always be late, never be on time, never get sleep, never have a clean house, never have alone time, and never keep on top of laundry. Maybe that's what they met the entire time, and I just took it to mean that somehow the addition of a third child meant your absolute derision to the outer rings of hell . . ..  now that I think about it, it's really the same thing, isn't it? Okay not really. Life is crazy, and life is hectic, but at some point in time you reach the realization that this is just life. It is Life as we know it! There ain't no changing it, so there really isn't a reason to get all down on yourself about it. I don't know. I guess that's God's way of helping me out. I have been lucky that no matter what is happening in our lives, I never feel overwhelmed. hmm . . . . that's not true either. I feel overwhelmed - CONSTANTLY! When we were dealing with Preslie's diagnosis, it was extremely overwhelming. Being pregnant and in school and working and mommy and wifey is all extremely overwhelming. Family life and callings and school work and housework and everything is entirely too busy (Eric and I were just talking about this the other day) but somehow even though we feel overwhelemed we DON'T feel overwhelmed. Make sense? Ya, I didn't think so. It's like we know that we should be overwhelmed, but somehow we just find ourselves laughing at everything instead. Which is a good attitude to have I guess.

HOUSE:

Somehow, in the midst of all our craziness with regular lifely happenings, we have decided to tackle even more fun stuff in our house. Nothing too huge at the moment, we'll save that until the good old tax returns get here. But we've definitely changed things. We recently decided, while doing a massive spring cleanign that took place in January (hey, there's no snow and it's 60 degrees outside, it might as well be spring) that we have to make some changes. Too often we house things that are given to us becuase they were given to us, and not because we like it or will ever use it. We're "growing up" per se in the lines of our house and what we use to furnish and decorate it. For the first years of our marriage it was just whatever we found at the time that fit into our budget and could fit in the door. I mean we've always tried to decorate nice - luckily we didnt' have to do the dumpster diving to furnish our trashy apartment ever (not that that is a bad thing) but we always had really good jobs even in college that allowed us to opt for the furniture that was only slightly used at 3 years old than completely thrased at 15 years dead. Well, now we've decided we need to save up and buy things that we actually like and that we actually need. This started with the purchase of a king bed! Holy cow! I can't even believe it! We needed a new mattress anyways - the mattress that was there we had since we first got married, and we adopted it from my parents who acquired it in a real estate investment two years before that, and who knows how long the mattress sat in the guest bedroom of that house before they bought it. Really there was no telling how old that thing was. So we got a new one, and in the process decided the bed should probably be big enough that when all the kids decide to harass us on Saturday mornings there is actually enough room for all of us to sit on it. Potentially it was a bad idea becasue nobody every wants to get OUT of the bed, but we sleep well, and even when Paxton invades the space both of us has room so we don't end up with sore muscles from contorting our bodies around the smallest human being in our house who happens to take up the most of the bed all night long. Preslie loves to jump on it, which is cute and annoying all at the same time. We had to get new bedding for the new bed in a room that we had JUST painted to match the old bedding. AWESOME that we ended up finding, and actuallly liking, a bedding set at Bed, Bath and Beyond that happened to be on major sale - and then we splurged and purchased sheets that were only sightly less in cost than the mattress itself. Eric says there is no greater purchase than good sheets . . . . . I happen to think there is no greater purchase than lip gloss, so we have different opinions on the subject. So aside from setting up and rearranging our entire master bedroom, we also have painted our living room - a color I can't tell if I'm completely sold on, but grows on me as we hang up more on teh wall - decided last night to repaint our office so it is a bit lighter and so we will be forced to finish our built ins and our van is currelty ABSOLUTLEY full of stuff to take to DI (like really, there is only room for us and one child to go.

PAX:

How do we find time to finish all of our homework (for classes that require at least 15 hours a week EACH) while keeping a semi-picked up house, changing the wall color in every room, and handling a spring cleaning? That's easy, his name is Paxton, and he never wants to sleep. That's not true, he actually sleeps quite often. It's more that situation where he finishes eating about 10, then we put him down, take a little time to unwind and it's already 1115, then the debate is do I really attempt to go to sleep now in the hopes of getting 5 minutes before he wakes up again at midnight, or do I just stay up and watch Swamp People? Well usually the latter wins that argument. And then we are frustrated when midnight thirty rolls around and the child still is not up. He confuses us greatly with his eating schedule cause he goes from every hour to a six hour stretch back to needing food right NOWWWWW. The last two nights have been pretty nice with his 6 hour stretches, so I'm hoping those stay up. Preslie was sleeping 8 hours straight at six weeks, and Pax will be six weeks on Saturday, so if we can evern have him close to that I will be happy. He's in that crappy inbetween stage with clothes. You know the one. Newborn clothes are small, they overaccentuate the fact that he he eats often by clingling to his ginormous belly that would indicate malnourishment in Africa, and his pants barely cover his socks. HOWEVER the three month size clothes are all huge and fall off and make me look like I don't care to dress him appropriately. Too many times have I bought clothes at the store only to bring them home and decide they just won't work now. I've given up on shopping anywhere close to us. It seems that EVERYONE has a boy the same age as ours because even if I happen to find cute clothes (which is a rare occurance) they are always gone in his size. It's rather annoying. So I've decided I am only ever going to shop at Carter's which is now conveniently opened up right next to Cabela's - the best of both worlds for husband and wife. Anyways I was telling Eric the other day that I think I love being able to call my child PAX more than I like saying the names of any of the others. It is highly probably this is because he is the newest, but none the less I have decided I truly love the name.

PRESLIE:

Pres has decided that she wants to be grown up. Well I don't know if she decided it so much as she had it THRUST upon her. She all of a sudden got old. She gets up and out of bed on her own and downstairs and plays without me ever having to do anything. Her vocabulary is getting huge! And she's becoming even more of a diva then she was before. She has decided that she HATES naptime, and she has all of a sudden developed this fear that anytime we walk out of the room, we are actually leaving. So now she stretches out her hands and yells WAAAIIITTTTT!!!!! as she runs after us - it is completely hilarious. I keep wanting to repaint her room, but Eric won't let me. We'll see who wins that argument.

PARKER:

Parker is a good big brother, most of the time. Maybe in reality the only problem is that he is TOO good of a big brother. He has to micro manage everything. Where people sit, what Preslie is doing, how she's talking. He even tries to discipline her - in true first born child fashion. We're working on it. He has been going on the scout campouts with Eric recently, which he loves, and I love that he is getting out and socializing, and I love that I don't have three kids to keep track of ont he weekends that Eric is out of town. That's super nice. His room is the next to get a makover. His current bunk bed is HUGE. One of those that has a desk on one side and shelves and a drawer on the other side, and the bed sits on top of them. Then the lower bed is supposed to come out perpendicular like. Needless to say, with the addition of another child, and putting the crib back in the room, there isn't enough room for the GINORMOUS fortress that is his current bed. So we're on the hunt for a more sleek bunk bed - let me know if you find one. Then the debate is what to do his room like. Currently it's this old vintage golf room. We're debating between taking it enitrely crazy and doing an extreme sports room with graffiti style painting, or doing a retro baseball room. I guess we shall just have to see what we can actually find stuff for.

This post is too long, and it's not even fun rambly, so now I'm done. I'll post again under a new title. 

The One With the Laughs

I'm not going to post much.

I am SO beyond tired and worn out with a baby that has decided he doesnt' want to sleep, a full school schedule (with one class that is kicking my trash - seriously I have the highest grade in the class at a 89%, there goes my 4.0), a busy household to take care of, work, and so on and so on.

So if I tried to post right now, it wouldn't make sense.

I just wanted to share this lovely picture with you all.

Preslie is getting HUGE!

(especially when compared to the newest midget addition)

And it's been awhile since there's been un updated picture.

Eric snapped this the other night right before bed.

Pardon her hair, cause it's crazy.

And pardon her face . . . cause she's crazy.

Really all this picture is for is to give EVERYONE  a good laugh.

Cause I know I can't look at it without laughing.



The One With the Yankee

Parker is in this obsessive Pirate stage.
He watches Pirates of the Caribbean constantly.
He still wears parts of his pirate costume from halloween.
He doesn't want to wear ANY item of clothing unless there is a skull and crossbones on it.
He won't drink out of any glass but his pirate thermos Aunt Katie got him for Christmas.
Preslie can play with any toy BUT pirate toys.
And everything he says ends in "Y'ar matey!"

Well the other day Parker was playing with his huge playmobil pirate boat and the million pirate people he has.

He held up a particularly sary little plastic man with a hook and a wooden peg leg and said "This is a swashbuckler."

Then he grabbed a colonial plastic gentlemen with the white haired wig and classy clothes and told us, "And this is a YANKEE!!"

Umm . . . . who's coming to my house at night and teaching my child these things?

The One With The Things Baby Three Has Taught Me

When we were pregnant with Parker - everyone told us this will be "the biggest change of your life, going from none to one . . . . there's no bigger change."

Well DUH!

Of course that's true. But it was even more true with Parker because of his cholic, and we felt truly terrible leaving him with ANYONE so we took him everywhere. More than once Eric or I found ourselves in the lobby of some restaurant we were supposed to be having date night but instead were battling a screaming child.

Sure glad Parker was so cute, or we would have thrown him in a closet.

Glad that's over.

Then when we were pregnant with Preslie everyone said "going from two is SO hard. It's harder than going from none to one, and it's harder than going from two to three."

I didn't think it was so bad.

Parker had a day and a half or so of being really upset he had to share mom and dad with a little alien with HUGE eyeballs, but he got over it soon. Two kids isn't so bad because you can do things like drive in a car - one car seat on each side, and go to the store by yourself - baby seat in the front part other kid in the basket, each parent has one responsibility which is especially nice when your husband decides it is "morally wrong" for him to change his daughter.

Sure two kids costs mroe than one kid, more diapers, more food, more clothes, another room to accessorize, yada yada, but I didnt' think it was too bad.

When we found out we were pregnant with Pax I practically cried. Three kids in four years? What are we nuts? (Oh wait, WE didn't plan this!!!) Every family that I saw with three kids, the oldest one was at least in kindergarten or something. Parker won't even be going to school for another two years (his birthday is in August, so we're starting him when he's six), and Preslie wouldn't even be two when this one was born.

It didn't help when people started saying things like, "oh my gosh! Going from two to three is the worst! Now you're outnumbered, you can never go to the store by yourself again, life as you know it is over, it's the end of the world!!!"

(Okay that may be an exaggeration . . . I mean, I can go to the store by myself still.)

But really it was a little crazy to have so many people tell us how hard it was gonna be.

The thing I LOVED was when people started saying how once you get past three it's "SO EASY" you can have four, five, six without even noticing!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

I'm rolling on the floor.

First off - NO WAY! If there's that many kids running around my house, I'm sure to notice. If not in actually seeing the, I'd notice in picking up all their messes, doing all their laundry, how much food we go through, how many clothes I have to buy, and in the amount of stretchmarks and fat on my body that I can't get rid of.

I'm sorry, there's no way you "don't notice" them. Don't try and fluff it.

Second - more kids? For us? psh!

Now that we have had little Pax, I can say that these are the things I have learned:

*This one may be a little TMI - but for those of you who have had a really rough delivery, or a c-section, you will know what I am talking about. The first un-medical-assisted bathroom trip is the second coming  . . . . it is GLORIOUS!

*Baby weight NEVER comes off fast! And personally I am not seeing it come off any slower with this one.

*Doctors who think you can actually go home and "relax" after getting your insides ripped open and then stapled back together are nuts. Okay doc, you come and take care of my kids, make food, clean the house, and run all my errands . . . oh and while you're at it, can you change the movie in the DVD player?

*Litle babies are always cute . . . even if they have red hair.

*The amount I love my child at the middle of the night between his every two hour feedings has a direct correlation to how old he is. The older he gets, the more my love "like" at 3am wains. And the more I go back to the idea of making him drive a beat up pinto for his first car.

*No matter how much we may want to, we will NEVER fit into a regular five-seater sedan. Three carseats in that back seat? I don't think so! And by the way, putting a rear-facing car seat in the passenger seat requires person sitting in passenger seat to eat the front dash.

*This little Pax has some serious gas! Seriously, it rivals any many I have ever met . . . and even most cheerleaders.

*Three kids is not that hard. It's all about getting a routine down. My routine currently revolves around me not getting out of bed until at least 9, and that still means I only got four hours of sleep.

*Parker and Preslie have become BEST FRIENDS (kind of) since new baby. They go downstairs in the morning or play in their rooms together. Preslie has become quite the little adult, she talks a ton more, and is less of a baby. It's sad to see her growing up.

*The first time you change your 19 month-old daughter's diaper after only changing your newborn for a week you will be AMAZED at how big her butt looks and will immediately decide it's time for her to be potty trained.

*Inevitably, your 19 month-old daughter will no longer have a desire for potty training when you are ready to teach her.

*The amount of laundry a third child adds, especially in the baby stage, is about 17.5 times more than the actual amount of outfits you have for him. I don't know how there's this much laundry, but he doesn't even have that many clothes

*It is true what they say, you think there is no way you could love another baby as much as you love your current little ones, but somehow you do.

HAPPY 4 WEEK BIRTHDAY PAX!



The One with the Pictures I Forgot

Totally spaced adding the pictures to that last post about Christmas.

So here they are instead!



The One With the Early Christmas

I never blogged about Christmas

Silly me.

Although, let's be real here, it's not like there hasn't been a bit going on in the Marshall household, so don't hate me.

But I figured I better get a little bit of it out there, you know, for posterity's sake. And so in twenty years my kids can't say they didn't get a Christmas the year Pax was born. I can be like - here it is you nit wits, its all in the pictures!!!

Aww Christmas . . .

I have a problem. Eric and I spend all this time shopping for presents, and then I spend all this time wrapping them, and then every day I rearrange them under the tree to have them look just so. Problem: This all happens before Thanksgiving.

Which isn't bad in theory, but in practice it's bad because by about December 2nd I'm already ready to open up all those presents. Not because I want things - let's face it, you have kids and getting gifts pretty much goes out the window most years - but because I LOVE watching little kiddos opening presents, and hopefully getting excited about what they got.

This year we tamed it back pretty well. You wouldn't have guessed I don't think by the looks of our tree. We had to move it from the living room into the office because the presents were spilling out from the corner where we had stuffed the tree into the center of the room. In the office there was much more room to spread them out to the sides, so the forward effect was a little less in your face. Eric and I are pretty good at finding good deals, and we're even better at making sure our kids don't know about any toys OTHER than the ones we got for them. GO US!

We let the kids open a few presents here and there "for good behavior" throughout the month. Come the night before Christmas Eve - Christmas Eve Eve - or for those of you numerical ones December 23rd, in the evening I told Eric I thought we should open presents. My reasoning was that on Christmas day we were supposed to go over to my parents in the morning, so we wouldn't have time to open our presents beforehand. And we couldn't even do it Christmas Eve because there was cooking, and baking, and candlestick making, and parties to attend to as well. So I convinced my uber cute husband to let us open them early. Even at December 23rd, I think it's the latest we have opened Christmas presents . ..  . yes yes yes, I am THAT girl.

But think about the timeline here folks! It's a WAY GOOD thing we opened up presents that night, because bright and early the next day, I was in labor with the littlest mister. So in reality, I saved Christmas for my little ones. Yes, now I am THAT girl (not to be confused with the previous THAT girl as this one takes on a slightly more superwoman physique).

So we crammed into the office, and it was dark outside (seeing as it was night time) so our pictures didn't come out that great. But it was still amazing. The kids were great. They were both willing to take turns and let everyone open presents one at a time. There wasn't any fighting, it was just awesome.

So this year Parker got (that I can remember a month later) well actually I don't want to go into this long list of things. So essentially, Parker's biggest present from us was a bunch of Pirate playmobil stuff - seriously like a million sets. And now I step on their little plastic bodies and their surprisingly sharp little swords all the time being that they are usually scattered throughout the house. Eric brought up his "BIG" gift to the hospital for Parker to open up in front of me on the actual Christmas Day.

Let me just dive off topic here for a second.

Why is it that Santa gets all the freaking credit? I mean really? Here I found this amazing deal on a iPad-esque (it's a knock off, even I won't spend that much money on a toy for Parker) tablet for Parker for Christmas. But do I get to give it to him and have him light up and say "Thank you Mommy, I LOVE it!" ERRR WRONG!

No I don't.

Instead I get to sit there and pretend with my child that Santa came down the smoke stack into our house, getting completely deformed to do so as Tim Allen does in the movie Santa Claus since we don't have an actual fireplace, and brougth this truly amazing "big phone" to Parker.

I'm not a fan of this Santa man.

At least I'm not a fan of giving him the credit. I think next year Santa will be doomed to only give our kids socks and underwear, that way all the cool presents can be given by Mom and Dad.

Sounds like a plan to me.

So yes, Parker got a tablet that he loves to play on, takes to church to keep quiet, takes in the car to keep quiet, watches movies on the works.

Preslie opened all her presents that night. I didn't want her to wait. Among a million squinkies and My Little Ponies, and dolls, her big present was a DOLLHOUSE!!!

So wierdly exciting for me. But it was. I'm excited to get her more furniture for it for her birthday and for more years to come. She LOVES IT! Exciting stuff.

Eric and I - well now that we are old, it all gets boring. Eric got some super hunky clothes for work. Yes super hunky! Cause he has to get dressed up every day. So he gets to wear nice clothes and look way too hot for his own good. And I got jewelry and a million new pairs of boots - Eric knows me so well.

All in all it was a great Christmas. I'm just looking forward to next year when I can once again be involved in the actual festivities!

The One With Paxton's Newborn Pictures

So my awesome friend Sireena - at Doty Photography (Google it and get in touch with her) ended up being able to take Paxton's newborn pictures like I wanted! She had her baby boy just about two weeks before Pax, so I wasn't sure if she would be up for it. True to her amazingness, she came! She brought all of her lights, props, cameras, little boy, and everything all the way out to the boondocks to my house!!!

After paying $1500 for Preslie's pictures, I was SO excited to get amazing pictures for a small fraction of that! :) Now don't get me wrong, Preslie's pictures are incredible! Kam Taylor is a phenomenal photographer and for those of you who don't mind spending your monthly mortgage payment on professional pictures, I would refer you to her.

For those of you who DO mind, I would refer you to Sireena who gets the same results!

Enjoy!

This is not all of them - I picked my favorites so as not to overload you!



The One With This Totally Awesome Family

Okay all!

Please look at the page of one of my favorite people in the entire world!!!

Seriously, no kidding, she's great, you'd love her.

She and her husband are looking to adopt.

So if you by chance know of someone who is looking for amazing parents for a little one, keep this family on your radar.

And yes, yes, yes, I will vouch for them and guarantee they are one hundred percent sane and entirely too awesome for their own good.

P/S - don't steal her pictures - or her identity.



The One With Three P's in a Pod

Everything was planned now and ready for me to go into a c-section on the 29th. I was resigned to that fact by this point in time. It was only going to be 7 days away, then 6, then 5.

I have to point out here, that for this ENTIRE pregnancy literally I had been saying how upset I would be if we were in the hospital over Christmas. I love Christmas, like a little kid, or like a fat kid loves cake (yes I said it rapper man). LOVE IT! It's hard not to when you have a pretty awesome family like mine and Christmas Eve dinners involve us acting out 12 Days Of Christmas complete with feathered goggles for the seven swans a swimming, and a giant parrot costume the victim must wear and prance around in for a partridge in a pear tree (who really even knows what a partridge looks like? Ours looks like a toucan). All the adults stay up late and play hearts and games and the kids run around, and food is good, and family is good, and the time is just great. Hence, why I would be completely depressed to miss it, and the idea of waiting around for an entire year for another one is not too appealing. Well . . . .

Saturday, Christmas Eve, the kids went downstairs and played and Eric and I stayed in bed sleeping* for much too long. When we finally rolled our way downstairs and got the kids breakfast it was getting close to 930 which was kind of nice. Then I figured I better start getting ready for our family party. The plan was to make sweet potatoes for both our family dinner that night and the family dinner on Sunday. I had also made pepperming bark that was chilling in the fridge the night before to break up and give in bags to my extended aunts and uncles. So went down and started breaking it up. Didn't take too long before I was doubled over in pain with a MASSIVE contraction.

AWESOME!!! Right?

I didn't know whether to be excited or not. Let's face it, I've had full days of contractions before that never amount to anything. Plus it's christmas Eve.

Well Eric immediately started timing the contractions. 5-6 minutes apart, right out of the gate. About 30 minuts into it I thought I better jump into the shower and get ready just in case. That way if the contractions continued at this rate I would be ready by the time we needed to head in.

With Preslie, I started having contractions about 8 in the morning. They were far apart at first and progressed throughout the day. When we finally went into the hospital a little before 6 that evening they were just barely getting to the point of being mostly uncomfortable and being about 5 minutes apart.

This time was different. Holy cow they were uncomfortable extremely painful from the beginning, leaving me doubled over in the shower yelling at Eric who would then write down the time. I get out and start to get my hair dried, make up done and Eric - being the awesoem person he is - jumps in the bath tub to "soak it out". I told him I was starting to have three contractions that were really close together and then it would be about 7 minutes between the triplets. I couldn't remember though if that meant actual labor or Braxton hicks so Eric started looking it up on his phone.

Strategically positioned (not really, we werent' paying attention when we put them up) there is a mirror on the wall in the bedroom that allows you to see our bed from the bath tub and vice versa.

Bring on a really painful contraction where I am whining and Eric says "my phone says to lay on your left side" so I hobble my way over trying to laugh through the pain and flop myself down on the bed. Eric immediately starts yelling "I said left side, LEFT SIDE! That's you're right!" The laughter at this point that consumed me almost took my mind off the contraction.

"This is my left side you idiot! You're looking in a mirror!!!"

Well needless to say in between contractions when I was joking and laughing I made fun of Eric and we talked about how that was like the perfect depiction of a Hollywood labor. To which his response was, just you wait in approximately three minutes I'll be laughing at you while your face turns red and you start hopping aroudn the bathroom.

Well it was true, I did. The contractions were getting way too close together and way too painful for me to ignore or assume were braxton hicks. So then I started kickign into hyper drive trying to get myself ready, get my bag finished packing, and get the kids ready to go to my parents. It seemed to take an eternity but we finally got into the car.

It's funny to me because I was in labor with Preslie for almost 12 hours before we went into the hospital and they delivered her. Eric still talks about how traumatizing that was.

I flat out told him that this time had to have been worse. Two and a half hours after contractions started and we were already heading into the hospital. I even ran back into the house when we were leaving to grab a towel and an extra pair of sweats because that's how convinced I was that my water would break before we even got there.

Dropped the kids off at my parents and we were on our way to the hospital.

The nurse checked - at a 5 you bought yourself a "ticket to stay".

Dr. Werdel wasn't at the hospital so it took a few minutes for him to get there, just enough time for them to blow two of my veins in each arm trying to get an IV in until finally the anesthesiologist put it in. All the doctors and nurses just kept saying "Are you guys this relaxed at all your deliveries?"

To which we responded yes. I won't go into specifics as it would make this post entirely too long to read, but if you can imagine Eric and I joking around the entire time at every question they asked us to the point that people were literally rolling with laughter - that's about how it was.

The c-section finally started, we had decided not to even try to guilt trip Dr West into coming in to deliver this one, and guess what, it was Christmas Eve so Dr. Werdel would be delivering another one of our kids. When we got back into the operating room he said "I remember you, you were this calm and hilarious at your last delivery too!" Funny stuff, funny stuff. Dr. Werdel is extremely fast - he had started cutting me open before they even brought Eric back in.

A few minutes of filling my insides ripped open while not feeling the actual pain - but then having a resident literally sit on my rib cage as they tried to pull Paxton out - they almost used the vacuum - and Mr. Paxton was here!

Now that everything is all said and done, I really did miss doing Christmas with my family. I sat in the hospital room most of Christmas day by myself as I felt it was more important for Eric to have our kids with the family at the parties that day. My family was awesome and that afternoon brought up presents for me to open and came and visited. In reality though - I don't think there could have been a better Christmas prsent than bringing this sweet little strawberry blonde boy into this world.

Paxton Dean Marshall

December 24th, 2011 2:48pm

7 Pounds 15 ounces 20 inches long

With Parker and Preslie and the addition of little Paxton, we now have three "p's" in a pod

I think a blog name change may be in order. . . .



The One Where I Bribe the Doctor

Thursday, December 22nd was our final doctor's appointment before the c-section that was scheduled for the 29th. It seemed inevitable that I would indeed make it to my scheduled delivery date . . . . which was a highly depressing thought.

On one hand I felt FOR SURE that my weekend relationship with the porcelin in our bathroom and the day of contractions that followed had to have done something. I thought there was a chance that I would be dilated enough that he would just say "Hey let's do this!" In which I would respond yes please do. This was the approximately .1% of me that still clung to this crazy thing called hope.

The more logical 99.9% of my brain knew that we would go in and nothing would have happened and we would end up having the "nice, calm, scheduled" delivery that Eric had been hoping for.

However this was my new logic to say to my doctor. They will GLADLY do a c-section a week before your due date, like it isn't an issue at all. A week before my due date would land me on Christmas Day exactly. Well no one wants to be in the hospital on Christmas Day doc - especially you I'm sure - so in reality what harm would it do to do a c-section literally 9 days before my due date rather than 7? I really don't see how this can be much of an issue.

So we get to the doctor's, get weighed *HURL*, get checked out by the nurse and then the doc comes in.

"Do you want me to check you for progress?"

This is a question I love.

Really I almost smacked him.

Hey Doc - YOU are the one who said last week that you would absolutely check me, so why are you asking me this question as if I am this crazy psycho pregnant lady who isn't actually dilating at all but wants you to check anyways  . . . . . well I guess I am, but still.

Yes Doc, please check.

*INTERMISSION FOR UNCOMFORTABLE MOMENT*

Doc: Well you're at a 2

Me: Really? Cause there's $200 in my pocket that says if you check again I'll be at that three I need to be.

Doc: Laugh. And then straight faced - you're at a 2.

Curse you doc!!! Curse you!

Really I never expected him to take the bribe, but it would have been secretly nice if he had.

Well doc - any chance you work Christmas Eve or Christmas? Cause it's looking like that's when I'll be in there knowing my extremely unlucky luck.

No he doesn't, Dr. Archibald works Christmas.

What about Christmas Eve?

Dr. Werdel (the doctor who ended up delivering Preslie)

Well, Sir, I'm sure that's when we'll be in, have a great holiday!

And we left it at that.

Previously Dr. West had given us his cell phone number with explicit instructions to call him if I was in labor so he could do the delivery. There was quite the debate between Eric and I on whether or not to use it if we actually ended up in there over Christmas or Christmas Eve. Eric felt like we shouldn't so he could spend time with family. I said we should cause the doctor didn't take the baby out early enough that I could spend time with my family. Essentially - it's all his fault and if I'm gonna be miserable because of his mistake, he HAS to be miserable too! It's only fair.

So we both went to work. And I resigned myself to waiting just another 7 days for this.

SIDENOTE: As much complaining about my doctor as I do - I really do LOVE him. I wouldn't have gone back to him for this baby if I didn't. I know their rules, and why they do things the way they do. I just like blaming all my discomfort on him, it seems appropriate somehow. Some wives take out their anger on their husbands - I just choose to use my doctor instead.