Max's birth

Max is here!

He was born April 29 at around 6pm. I was induced a few days early (his due date was May 4) because I had gestational diabetes and those babies tend to be bigger.



Jeannette was nice enough to babysit Sophia for a few days so we checked into the hospital early Monday morning.  

It was pretty slow going mostly. I was having contractions that I couldn't even feel for hours. When they finally broke my water, I could feel them pretty strongly and asked for my epidural soon after. The epidural made me sick and I threw up a few times. That happened when I had Sophia too. Yuck! I was pretty numb after that and couldn't lift my legs... it's the weirdest feeling! There was one spot on my lower abdomen  about the size of a quarter that wasn't numb, so with every contraction I had seriously intense pain in one tiny little spot. It was annoying. Eventually that went numb too.  When it was finally time to push, it all went really quickly. I only had to push for 12 minutes and he was here, healthy and big! The only scare we had, was after his head was delivered, his shoulder got stuck. Suddenly there were 2 more nurses helping, and Rich and my mom were pushed aside. They pushed on my stomach a lot to get him to turn. I could tell it was serious by the way my Dr was acting and how my mom looked. I guess he was stuck for 90 seconds and his arm was kinda cutting off his air supply. When he was fully delivered, I remember his face looked almost black and I'm not sure if it was from lack of air, or from bruising. My Dr. said that if he was delivered too fast when he was stuck like that, the tendons in his neck could have been severed and he could have had some paralysis in his arm. Luckily everything turned out fine, and I was able to watch Dancing with the Stars while I held my new baby.

8 lbs 13 oz and 21 inches long.

Happy and calm now 

We loved having visitors in the hospital. Thanks to everyone who visited. Here is Mike and Max. 

He was a sweet boy from the beginning. The only time I heard him cry was when he was circumcised. Poor guy!

 

My two favorite guys!

Sophia did great meeting him. She loved on him and kept saying his name. She is so sweet!  

She's happy to be a sister... most days. It was so fun seeing her after two days of not being with her. She suddenly looked so BIG!  When we got home from the hospital, she was pretty indifferent toward him, which was good. Then when he was 6 weeks old, she felt like he was out staying his welcome and she got pretty jealous. Now she's back to being indifferent.

Max just had his 2 month appointment and his stats are:

47% weight and 87% height. I hope he can keep these stats his whole life! They sound pretty perfect to me! 

He is a good eater. He only cries if he is tired, hungry, or dirty, so he's pretty easy to keep happy. He is so snuggley and sweet. He is smiling now and has a pretty cute little dimple on his right cheek when he does. I think he looks a lot like Rich, but with my eye shape. It it so cool to see eyes that look like mine looking up at me. I am so thankful for this little guy and I hope he grows up to be the kind of guy who calls his mom everyday!  

April pictures

Here I am playing catch up again!

This April, my mom came down and spent the day with us. We went to Baby Animal Days at This is the Place. It was really such fun! I love baby animals, but watching Sophia enjoy them made it lots more fun.





They let you go into this fenced in area where they have the goats and sheep. It's a hands on experience, as you can see! The goats LOVED my mom. (I can't blame them... she is the best!) 

Sophia was fearless in this flock of sheep. If I ever live out my dream, and become a sheep herder, I will take this girl with me!

 

She really loved the baby sheep... it just doesn't look like it. :)

They also had these cute little goats that I wanted to sneak home in my purse! They were so much fun to watch because they were so playful!

Sophia practicing milking a cow. 

She was a little nervous to sit on the cow, but then didn't want to get off.
 

Here she is, on her first horse ride. At first she was really nervous to get on and I didn't think she would, but after only a brief hesitation, she wanted to ride it.  

I was really proud of her because she was the only toddler who was brave enough to ride. The others started crying when they got up close. Her Grandma and Grandpa Bruderer would be proud of her too!

 

When they started walking, she couldn't stop laughing! It was the cutest thing!
 

This park has it all! They have train rides all over! We used this site for our reception and they let us rent out a train to take people around the park. On this day, Sophia was able to ride on that one, play in a wooden one, and...

ride on a mini train around this little pond. We love this place! 

On to other April news.

This is gross. I probably shouldn't even post it, but I want you all to see what I walked in when I checked on her during her nap. If you look closely, you can see poo dried on her face. To this day, she still talks about pooping her bed. She says, "Oh, no! Poop on blanket. Poop in crib."  And I have to remind her that I cleaned it all up.

Here she is running with her baby.

Cute, happy girl!  

Feeding her new baby.

The 3 of us went walking up City Creek canyon and had a picnic. It was a lot of fun being outdoors in the nice weather together. Here are Rich and Sophia throwing rocks into the water. Two of my favorite people!

 

Easter is much more fun with kids!

Easter used to be one of my favorites as a kid. My grandma would plan this elaborate Easter egg hunt and would hide a golden egg. Whoever found the golden egg got the big prize, which was usually an awesome toy of some kind. I would get so excited and this year, I felt like I got to re-live some of the excitement with Sophia. She found her Easter basket and immediately put her little bunny ears on. She wouldn't take them off (as you can see) until we were done with all the fun Easter festivities.

 

We didn't do much this Easter, but we did set up a little egg hunt for her. She thought it was pretty fun to carry around the basket and put eggs in it.

 

Here is the bread we made for Easter. I was pretty happy with how it turned out because I'm not much of a baker. (Look at the pretty flowers Rich had waiting for me that morning!)
 

After church, I tried to get a good, cute picture of Sophia, but these are all I could get. And she was totally over wearing the bunny ears by, so my photo shoot didn't go as planned. Anyway, I think she still pulls off a cute little Easter girl. :)

 

 

 

March catch-up

Oh, Sophia! She becoming so independent now. She wants to do everything by herself and she will say, "do it"- which means, "I'll do it". One of the things she wants to do is undress. I love that she wants to do things on her own, but I think this is taking it a bit too far. I went to check on her before I went to bed, and saw her like this. She was sleeping so innocently, too.  Luckily, I got to her before any messes were made. :)



We had an outing with one of her best friends, Lydia. Lydia is only 4 months older than Sophia, but look at the difference in their hair! Isn't that funny! Sophia and Lydia walked through the store, holding each other's hands, and did a little shopping of their own. Sophia picked out that blue yarn. (?) The next time we went to their house, Sophia kept telling me she wanted to hold Lydia's hand and as soon as she saw her, she went right over and held her hand. So cute!

For Lydia's birthday, they were nice enough to take us to the zoo. Sophia LOVES the zoo. She is super scared of the gorilla, but that's also the only thing she really wants to see. She also loves the carosel. She usually laughs the whole time, but I think on this day, she was more interested in people watching.

She has started "helping" me with everything. She especially loves to "dump" and "stir" while I cook. This was the day before Easter and we were making bread. I love that she has flour on her head. Just like a true cook! :)

 

My mom bought her an apron that she can wear when we cook, but she kind of hates wearing it. I think if I start wearng mine more, she'll decide to wear hers.

Also in March, Rich had a birthday and we had so much fun. At lunch, Sophia and I made cookies for him and took it into his work. It was fun meeting all his co-workers and hanging out in his office.  My mom was nice enough to come down and babysit that night so we could go out. We went to dinner and a movie. Dinner was AMAZING and so peaceful without a little girl with us. The movie we saw was Lincoln. As I was sitting in the theater watching it, I kept thinking, "I'm bored". When it was over, I really started to hate it and was mad that we sat through the whole thing. I don't get what the big deal was with that movie. Despite the wasted time, it was so fun being on a real date with Rich and celebrating with him.

February Catch-Up

Some things we've been up to in February are:

We went to Barnes and Noble for a book, but Sophia went there to accessorize. She was cracking us up at how she wore those glasses (which are reading glasses and made her eyes look super big) and carried the bag around the whole time we were in the store. She did really well at putting them back when we were ready to go though. She is so fun!



I got to babysit Brooklyn while her mom was at the dentist while they were in town. Sophia loved hanging out with Brooklyn again. What cute girls!

I finally decided to let Sophia play with playdough. I've been really nervous about it because of how messy it can be. I'm imagining it being smashed in the carpet, in her clothes, and most disturbingly, in her mouth. So I made some that is safe to eat and I moved her little table into the kitchen for easy clean up. She is only interested in it for about 5 minutes at a time though.

* Side note* Do you see the island in our kitchen? Rich made that for me for Christmas. I love it and it has really changed my life. No joke. I will post better pictures of it later though. I had no idea he was going to build it for me and he designed it all himself! What a guy! :)



My ward has started doing a playgroup and it has made such a difference in our daily lives! Sophia loves getting together with her friends... and so do I! In this picture, we were at a story time at the library and then the kids played afterwards in the library's "treehouse" area. Sophia loved that story time. After each story, song, or puppet show, she would stand up and say, "AGAIN!" She was giving them "encores" for everything and I bet they were flattered! :)

I know we did more, but these are all the photos I took. Sadly, I still can't remember to take more pictures.  Oh, well!

January happenings

So, somehow my computer erased all my November and December pictures. I don't want to talk about it. (Luckily I was able to get them all printed off, but no digital copies.)

Here are the pictures I took in January.  I made Sophia this owl hat and she really likes it. I have to admit, she looks pretty dang cute in it! I made one for her baby too, and I love how she carries it around with her when both their hats are on.



Sophia loves watching Elmo. I try to limit TV time, but it sure is nice when I'm trying to get dinner made or the house clean!  

 Lately she has been brave enough to lie down in the bath tub and she thinks she's pretty cool. I love how proud of herself she gets when she does this.  The first few times she did this, Rich and I would watch her and laugh because she was so serious. No smile, no moving,  just looking around with her eyes.

This is one of my favorite things about Sophia. She loves books. I will find her like this: sitting in her big chair, surounded by books, and often looking at one upside down. It cracks me up!

Here are some things that she is doing lately: (Warning- this may be boring for everyone else since ther are no pictures and lots of detail about what Sophia is doing.)

In the mornings, Rich usually gets her up. She sleeps until about 6:30-7:30 and he gets her breakfast. When I get out of bed, he finishes getting ready for work and he always brings his shoes and socks into the kitchen to put them on. Sophia is super helpful. As soon as Rich puts a shoe on the floor, she picks it up and gives it to him, saying, "shoe". She follows him around "helping" until he is all ready, then she waves at him and says "bye".

When Rich leaves, she usually likes to play with some toys... especially her babies. I love that she likes her babies so much. She has been tickling them lately and putting them down for naps.

She loves to eat cheese... just like her mom! She says it like this, "teese". Which also sounds just like how she pronounces "keys," "please," and "teeth" (for toothbrush).

She likes to take me and Rich by the finger and lead us to the fridge or whatever she wants.

When Rich gets home, she loves to play with him on the floor. She will say, "ball" and Rich lies on the floor with the ball under his head and then the games begin. :)

She loves to talk on the phone to my mom and loves to facetime with Corinne. She will ask several times a day for "mam-ma".

She loves when we play with Rocco. I will make Rocco stay while Sophia and I hide behind a door or somewhere in another room and then when he comes to find us, Sophia cracks up so hard. She also gets a good belly laugh when I make Rocco roll-over.

When it's nap time or time for bed, I usually read her a story and then put her down, but lately she has been asking to "rock". After we read the books, she'll turn around and rest her head on my shoulder while I rock her in the chair. I love that she likes to rock, it's one of the best parts of my day. She also will lift up her shirt and say, "back", which means it's time for me to tickle her back. It's so cute! If she's not too tired, she'll pop her head up and point to items in her room while saying their names. (blanket, mom, wipe, diaper, baby, binki, bear, elephant, etc.)

She is now in nursery, thank heavens! It took a couple weeks for her to adjust, but now it's pretty smooth, and I couldn't be happier. We have church at 1 now, so I have to wake her up from her nap to go. Last week, Rich had to go up to church early and when Sophia saw him putting on his tie, she said, "church?". I was surprised she knew that when he puts a tie on, he goes to church. Anyway, when I woke her up from her nap, she was super groggy until I said, "Do you want to go to church?" She said, "Dad?" I was surprised she remembered where he was. I told her she was going to nursery and she was real willing to get ready and go. Rich dropped her off and she didn't cry or protest at all. Oh, I love it!

She likes to have things in their right place. If Rocco's food dish is crooked, she'll say, "Oh!" and go straighten it. Or if she is playing with a spoon or a dish, she'll say, "back" which means she's done playing with it and wants to put it back. She also will wipe up her spills.  It's so nice... and my fingers are crossed that being clean is a part of her personality, and not just a phase!

That's all for now!