The New Addition

We had our ultrasound today for baby #2! Everything looked fine. The baby's heartbeat was 147 bpm. The only thing the ultrasound tech couldn't see was all of the spine so the doctor will have us do another ultrasound at our next appointment. That will be my 24 week appointment so I'll also have the glucose test for gestational diabetes.

Oh, and we didn't find out the gender, so it's still a surprise!

Christmas Family Fun

We had our Kerns Family Christmas Party on December 11th with lots of aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom had never met Laurel. As you can tell, she made friends quick!








A White Christmas

We had lots of fun here at Christmas! We hosted a luncheon on Christmas Eve for both sides of the family and had about 18 in attendance. Later that afternoon we did a gift exchange at Tim's parents house. Later we went to visit my parents. On Christmas morning we woke up and opened our family and Santa gifts. We spent the rest of Christmas Day (and the next day) at my parents house with my little brother Aaron. We were even blessed with a White Christmas!



Laurel was a little unsure of getting bundled up and going out in the snow, but once she did I thought we'd never get her back inside!







Nursing Dilemma

As you know from the ticker at the top of the page, I'm currently 18 weeks pregnant. What some of you may not realize is that Laurel is still breastfeeding. Before the stones come out, I assure you that it is perfectly safe to do during a low-risk pregnancy and I've not had so much as a Braxton-Hicks contraction at this time. But right now I'm facing a dilemma and I'm not sure what I want to do or what the best decision is.

When I first found out I was expecting again, I contemplated tandem nursing (nursing a toddler and a newborn at the same time). After reading and talking to a few mamas who had been down that road, I decided it was not the best choice for our family.

Right now, Laurel is only nursing once or twice a day (mostly at bedtime). On weekends (when we're together all day) she will also nurse for naps. She has seemed much less interested lately as my milk supply has greatly diminished. Up until two weeks ago she had never gone to sleep without nursing at night. We nightweaned about two or three months ago and have just cuddled with her when she wakes up during the night, but she doesn't get nursies (she did surprisingly well with that). We cosleep, so the cuddling is pretty easy to do when she does wake up, which I can thankfully say is pretty rare now and for usually only a couple minutes!

There have been probably 4-5 nights in the past two weeks where she will go to bed with me and be happy to just cuddle to go to sleep without asking for or needing nursies. There have been a couple instances where I have told her nursies have already gone night-night when it's a particularly late night. She seems to be doing the cuddling to sleep very well.

Initially I had hoped to nurse her until she was two years old (as per the WHO recommendation). Her birthday is Jan. 29th, but I'm afraid that I'll miss a "prime-time" for complete weaning if we keep doing what we're doing for another month and a half just to hit that milestone.

My biggest fear is that while waiting for the next six weeks, she will become reattached to nursing, and we will have to start this weaning process all over again. I want to make this as easy as possible for her (and me), but I was also previously pretty set on nursing to two years old.

Doing well

Everything is going well with our family. It has been a rough few weeks for some friends and makes it hard to write uplifting, entertaining or informative blog entries. I also don't feel like it's my place to share their very private and heartbreaking experiences.

I am starting to feel the baby move now most days, which is exciting. We're scheduled for our 20 week ultrasound on Dec. 28th. We do not plan on finding out the baby's gender (much to the chagrine of some family members.) Laurel's being her usual brilliant, wild and hilarious little self.

A Buzzy Halloween

We had a great Halloween as Laurel buzzed her way through town as the world's most adorable bumblebee. She was a big fan of the candy, too!



Here she is comparing costumes with her friend Phoebe.

Coming this Spring...

Baby #2 is on the way! We're so happy to announce that we will be adding to our family and making Laurel a big sister! The due date is May 14th. Tim and I were able to hear a strong and clear heartbeat of 170 bpm today at the doctor's office, and we received the first picture of our new little one.

Mama Needs her Sleep (no seriously, I'm exhausted)

Today Laurel turns 20 months old! As unbelievable as that milestone is, it seems even more incredible that I've not had a good night's sleep in 20 months! (That might be a slight exaggeration, but very slight.) As we move towards two years old, we're trying to make the adjustment from parenting a baby to parenting a child. AND IT IS HARD!

Tim and I are still very much in the attachment parenting camp, but with that comes the realization that baby's needs eventually level off with the family's needs instead of claiming total and sole priority (which, I believe, are a must during infancy). While Laurel is still breastfeeding and I'm still happy with the arrangement, I will say that the night nursing is getting a little out of control and sleep-depriving for everyone (we cosleep). That being said, Tim and I are now seriously looking toward the possibility of night weaning. So far I'm leaning towards Dr. Jay Gordon's plan, which is a gradual one that should only be done once a child reaches 12-18 months old. I have no idea if it will work for us, but after being up 10 times, we know something's got to change!

Here's a link to Dr. Gordon's article "Sleep, Changing Patterns in the Family Bed," http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html.

The basic idea is that parents pick the 7 hours a night that they most want to sleep (example: 11 p.m to 6 a.m.) and stay within the following boundaries for those times.

First 3 Nights:

When your baby awakens, hug her, nurse her and comfort her, but but her down awake. Provide comfort and nursing, but not until the child is completely asleep.

Next 3 Nights:

When the baby awakens, pick her up, hug and cuddle her, but do not feed her. Putting her down awake is a crucial part of this whole endeavor because it teaches baby to fall asleep with a little less contact.

Next 4 Nights and Beyond:

When the baby awakens, talk to her and comfort her, massage and pat her, but do not pick her up or feed her. By the end of the ninth night, she will be falling back to sleep with only a rub a soothing voice.

All of this is done within the confines of the family bed.

Now, I know I have a fairly strong-willed child who loves her nursies, so I'm not sure what the next ten days will hold, but I hope and pray that we as a family can move past our current exhaustion to a healthier and happier nighttime for all.

Saying Goodbye to our Carter

As many of you know, Carter and Shelby (our cats) are very much a part of our family. Over the past three weeks, Carter (a three year old male) has been suffering from feline lower urinary disease and then a series of very painful complications.

To make a very long and sad story short, Tim and I had to make the excrutiatingly difficult decision last night to have him put to sleep. We have a wonderfully compassionate veterinarian who cried with us as we held Carter and cuddled him for the last time. Here are some of my favorite pictures of our wild, friendly, mischevious Carter bug.
We've got him buried in the backyard with a small, pink flower and a ribbon marking his little grave. He was a wonderful cat and we will miss him very, very much.

House Remodel Pictures

So as most of you know, Tim and I bought a new house in April. From then until June we ripped up and replaced almost all the flooring, painted about every surface, replaced most of the lights and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. We moved in towards the end of June and though it's still a huge work in progress, here are some of our accomplishments so far:

Living room:



Master Bedroom:

Upstairs hallway:

Laurel's bedroom:

Guest bedroom:

Upstairs landing:


Dining room: (I don't think I took a before picture).
Notice, there are no pictures of bathrooms or the kitchen, so like I said, we've still got a long way to go. But in the next picture you'll see a couple of the reasons we are loving our new location:
And just because it's so friggin' adorable:

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The New Addition

We had our ultrasound today for baby #2! Everything looked fine. The baby's heartbeat was 147 bpm. The only thing the ultrasound tech couldn't see was all of the spine so the doctor will have us do another ultrasound at our next appointment. That will be my 24 week appointment so I'll also have the glucose test for gestational diabetes.

Oh, and we didn't find out the gender, so it's still a surprise!

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Christmas Family Fun

We had our Kerns Family Christmas Party on December 11th with lots of aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom had never met Laurel. As you can tell, she made friends quick!








A White Christmas

We had lots of fun here at Christmas! We hosted a luncheon on Christmas Eve for both sides of the family and had about 18 in attendance. Later that afternoon we did a gift exchange at Tim's parents house. Later we went to visit my parents. On Christmas morning we woke up and opened our family and Santa gifts. We spent the rest of Christmas Day (and the next day) at my parents house with my little brother Aaron. We were even blessed with a White Christmas!



Laurel was a little unsure of getting bundled up and going out in the snow, but once she did I thought we'd never get her back inside!







Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Nursing Dilemma

As you know from the ticker at the top of the page, I'm currently 18 weeks pregnant. What some of you may not realize is that Laurel is still breastfeeding. Before the stones come out, I assure you that it is perfectly safe to do during a low-risk pregnancy and I've not had so much as a Braxton-Hicks contraction at this time. But right now I'm facing a dilemma and I'm not sure what I want to do or what the best decision is.

When I first found out I was expecting again, I contemplated tandem nursing (nursing a toddler and a newborn at the same time). After reading and talking to a few mamas who had been down that road, I decided it was not the best choice for our family.

Right now, Laurel is only nursing once or twice a day (mostly at bedtime). On weekends (when we're together all day) she will also nurse for naps. She has seemed much less interested lately as my milk supply has greatly diminished. Up until two weeks ago she had never gone to sleep without nursing at night. We nightweaned about two or three months ago and have just cuddled with her when she wakes up during the night, but she doesn't get nursies (she did surprisingly well with that). We cosleep, so the cuddling is pretty easy to do when she does wake up, which I can thankfully say is pretty rare now and for usually only a couple minutes!

There have been probably 4-5 nights in the past two weeks where she will go to bed with me and be happy to just cuddle to go to sleep without asking for or needing nursies. There have been a couple instances where I have told her nursies have already gone night-night when it's a particularly late night. She seems to be doing the cuddling to sleep very well.

Initially I had hoped to nurse her until she was two years old (as per the WHO recommendation). Her birthday is Jan. 29th, but I'm afraid that I'll miss a "prime-time" for complete weaning if we keep doing what we're doing for another month and a half just to hit that milestone.

My biggest fear is that while waiting for the next six weeks, she will become reattached to nursing, and we will have to start this weaning process all over again. I want to make this as easy as possible for her (and me), but I was also previously pretty set on nursing to two years old.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Doing well

Everything is going well with our family. It has been a rough few weeks for some friends and makes it hard to write uplifting, entertaining or informative blog entries. I also don't feel like it's my place to share their very private and heartbreaking experiences.

I am starting to feel the baby move now most days, which is exciting. We're scheduled for our 20 week ultrasound on Dec. 28th. We do not plan on finding out the baby's gender (much to the chagrine of some family members.) Laurel's being her usual brilliant, wild and hilarious little self.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

A Buzzy Halloween

We had a great Halloween as Laurel buzzed her way through town as the world's most adorable bumblebee. She was a big fan of the candy, too!



Here she is comparing costumes with her friend Phoebe.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Coming this Spring...

Baby #2 is on the way! We're so happy to announce that we will be adding to our family and making Laurel a big sister! The due date is May 14th. Tim and I were able to hear a strong and clear heartbeat of 170 bpm today at the doctor's office, and we received the first picture of our new little one.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Mama Needs her Sleep (no seriously, I'm exhausted)

Today Laurel turns 20 months old! As unbelievable as that milestone is, it seems even more incredible that I've not had a good night's sleep in 20 months! (That might be a slight exaggeration, but very slight.) As we move towards two years old, we're trying to make the adjustment from parenting a baby to parenting a child. AND IT IS HARD!

Tim and I are still very much in the attachment parenting camp, but with that comes the realization that baby's needs eventually level off with the family's needs instead of claiming total and sole priority (which, I believe, are a must during infancy). While Laurel is still breastfeeding and I'm still happy with the arrangement, I will say that the night nursing is getting a little out of control and sleep-depriving for everyone (we cosleep). That being said, Tim and I are now seriously looking toward the possibility of night weaning. So far I'm leaning towards Dr. Jay Gordon's plan, which is a gradual one that should only be done once a child reaches 12-18 months old. I have no idea if it will work for us, but after being up 10 times, we know something's got to change!

Here's a link to Dr. Gordon's article "Sleep, Changing Patterns in the Family Bed," http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html.

The basic idea is that parents pick the 7 hours a night that they most want to sleep (example: 11 p.m to 6 a.m.) and stay within the following boundaries for those times.

First 3 Nights:

When your baby awakens, hug her, nurse her and comfort her, but but her down awake. Provide comfort and nursing, but not until the child is completely asleep.

Next 3 Nights:

When the baby awakens, pick her up, hug and cuddle her, but do not feed her. Putting her down awake is a crucial part of this whole endeavor because it teaches baby to fall asleep with a little less contact.

Next 4 Nights and Beyond:

When the baby awakens, talk to her and comfort her, massage and pat her, but do not pick her up or feed her. By the end of the ninth night, she will be falling back to sleep with only a rub a soothing voice.

All of this is done within the confines of the family bed.

Now, I know I have a fairly strong-willed child who loves her nursies, so I'm not sure what the next ten days will hold, but I hope and pray that we as a family can move past our current exhaustion to a healthier and happier nighttime for all.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Saying Goodbye to our Carter

As many of you know, Carter and Shelby (our cats) are very much a part of our family. Over the past three weeks, Carter (a three year old male) has been suffering from feline lower urinary disease and then a series of very painful complications.

To make a very long and sad story short, Tim and I had to make the excrutiatingly difficult decision last night to have him put to sleep. We have a wonderfully compassionate veterinarian who cried with us as we held Carter and cuddled him for the last time. Here are some of my favorite pictures of our wild, friendly, mischevious Carter bug.
We've got him buried in the backyard with a small, pink flower and a ribbon marking his little grave. He was a wonderful cat and we will miss him very, very much.

Friday, August 20, 2010

House Remodel Pictures

So as most of you know, Tim and I bought a new house in April. From then until June we ripped up and replaced almost all the flooring, painted about every surface, replaced most of the lights and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. We moved in towards the end of June and though it's still a huge work in progress, here are some of our accomplishments so far:

Living room:



Master Bedroom:

Upstairs hallway:

Laurel's bedroom:

Guest bedroom:

Upstairs landing:


Dining room: (I don't think I took a before picture).
Notice, there are no pictures of bathrooms or the kitchen, so like I said, we've still got a long way to go. But in the next picture you'll see a couple of the reasons we are loving our new location:
And just because it's so friggin' adorable:
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