A Visit to Charleston

Uncle Adam and Kalista just got married! For the wedding we all loaded up and headed to Charleston for a long weekend of wedding and beach fun. We stayed in Folley Beach and enjoyed every minute of family time, beach time and eating yummy food. Ava is an old beach pro, but this was Bennett's first official vacation and first trip to the beach.

Congratulations Uncle Adam and Kalista! My camera fogged up when we went from the hotel to the beach for the wedding, so I don't have any pictures of the ceremony.
Fun at the beach and pool! Bennett loved riding in his back pack. Ava loved playing on the beach with Uncle Adam and Daddy, and of course swimming with Granny.

Some fun family pictures

Congratulations Kalista & Adam, we love you both and wish you the very best!

Happy 4th of July

Family of four...now we have 2 little firecrackers to love! Getting a family picture was hard before, but now it's almost comical.

Our two firecrackers...poor Bennett wiggles so much that Ava has a hard time holding him. A quick pic with Uncle Todd.

We headed over to the Robertson's house on Lake Spivey for our annual 4th of July fun. Up until yesterday, Ava has pretty much been petrified of swimming...not any more! Once she realized she wouldn't sink she was good to go!

She had a blast with Uncle Todd...they swam together for over 2 hours...she even let Uncle Todd dunk her under several times.

Ava and Abby sitting down by the lake watching the sunset.

Sorry for the arm in the picture. Ava and daddy had fun with sparklers.

Bennett after church...how many chins does he have?

Happy 1 month Bennett! Today, Bennett is 1 month old! We've been busy, but as usual I have no idea where the past 4 weeks have gone. We are adjusting to many changes at home, but Bennett is doing wonderful. He is such a good baby and is sleeping anywhere from 4-6 hours at night. He loves his sister and I swear when she talks to him he grins. He is a great eater and is also super strong...he's been holding his head up consistently for over a week now.
These pictures were taken right before we left for his 1 month check-up...Look at our sweet little sailor!

His 1 month stats:

10lbs 5 ounces- 70th percentile

21 1/2" long- 50th percentile

Just some fun pictures we've taken over the past several weeks

Snoozing with daddy

Ava's First Haircut

Yes...that's right her first haircut at almost 4 years of age, but you must remember there are different rules for curly hair people!

We took her last week to Pigtails and Crewcuts for her first haircut and they ended up doing a great job. Even though they just took of 1/4" or so off it really made her hair look shorter...and curlier!

She was such a big girl and super excited to get her haircut. She chose the fire truck to sit in and had the best manners. The curly hair stylist did a great job with our curly hair little girl! Here are just a few fun pictures...as you can see we still haven't mastered looking AT the camera!

The Rest of the Story...

This post is actually the most current, but I didn't want it to be the first post everyone read when they opened up our blog...After all we are most excited about Bennett's arrival!!!

As you all know we came home from the hospital on Sunday, May 31st feeling great and excited to spend some time as an official family of four. Tuesday evening or more like midnight Wednesday morning I got up to get Bennett and thought I was more sore than before. I bent down to pick him up, and realized it felt like an elephant on my chest so I woke up Nick. We came out to the family room, I thought maybe I just was uncomfortable in the bed so I would just hang out on the couch and feed him. Nick went back to bed, but left the bedroom door open so I could call him if I needed him. Not long after I discovered I was in a considerable amount of pain and tried to call him, but couldn't. I somehow made it to my mom's bedroom and got her up so she could feed Bennett. Well we ended up getting Nick, calling the Doctor on call who told me to take two pain pills and a motrin and call in the morning if it wasn't better. By the morning I still had a fever, full fledged labor contractions and severe pain in the abdomen so we called Dr. Fisch and she told Nick and I to come in.

Dr. Fisch was very concerned as she knows that I am not a complainer and I have a very high tolerance for pain. Nothing was wrong with my incision and nothing pointed to signs that something went wrong with the c-section, so she began to worry that I had a blood clot somewhere in my chest or abdomen or that I had a perforated bowel. She immediately admitted me and 45minutes later we were back on the LDR floor at Piedmont. I had a CT scan, blood cultures and other delightful tests. The CT scan showed that everything was fine in my abdomen, but my uterus had not "released" the left over "stuff" that it's suppose to after you have a baby (no matter which way you deliver). They started treating me with an antibiotic and gave me Pitocin to try and get the uterus to contract some more and get rid of the "stuff" on it's own. Finally on Friday, the cultures came back and revealed that I had a gram negative bacteria running thru my bloodstream. A severe infection...that meant if I had come in any later I would most likely have been in ICU with sepsis. Infectious disease was called in to determine what type of antibiotic to treat me with. Meanwhile my uterus didn't feel like letting go of the pregnancy remnants, so I was put to sleep and the Doctor's took care of it. Friday night I was feeling better and could at least talk, get out of bed and finally eat after 3 days. Infectious disease found an antibiotic that I could take at home and we came home Saturday night. Basically, the infection was somehow caused by my uterus retaining the "stuff", which just turned into an infection.

So...sorry for the long details but needless to say things have been interesting! Being away from our sweet baby boy and girl literally broke our hearts, and I cannot even go into how both Nick and I felt. On top of being away from his babies, Nick had to see me in the worse pain of my life and we had to go through some horrible stuff. However, we made it through with some heavy prayer and we are glad to be home and on the final road to recovery!