Splish Splash Summer Fun!

My kids are little fish, and love their pool.  They spend nearly every day of their summer vacation out in the pool at least for a little while.  We invest in a lot of sunblock. 

 

Matthew, who used to be afraid of the water now loves it as much as the others!

 

This year we even got little Addy to go in!  

 

I bought the kids some new noodles, one for each of them...it didn't take Addy long to claim them all!

 

Andy bought a few loungers for Tay and Rachel to use to float Indian Creek with our church's youth group.  Rachey and Brooklynn decided they needed to test them out in the pool first.

 

Addy cracks me up.  If she has her water wing life jacket on and has her noodles underneath her, she'd be perfectly happy to just bob around all day long.

 

Lainah is growing up too fast!  She is my one who looks tanned all year long, but in the summer she gets so dark!

 

And Matthew is such a great sport to hang out with the girls.  Poor kid has to put up with a lot sometimes.

 

Andy Taylor?  Well, he's inside blowing up the last of the loungers.  Yep...he blew them all up with his incredible lung power.  Andy and I knew all along that he was full of hot air!

First Week Home

Emma's first week home was very quiet and peaceful.  I love having summer babies...our family schedule is at a minimum and so there's time to just enjoy our cute little one and rest!

Here she is just kicking around on her blankey...she is SO long!

Something that made our first week home so nice was that Rachel was home from school and could help me out with the other kids.  Here she is giving Addy a manicure.  What a great big sister she is!

 

The other thing that made our first week home so restful, was that grandma and grandpa came to visit for a few days!  They were amazing!  Grandpa helped motivate my kids to clean rooms, and organize dressers, he helped me get Taylor to and from summer training at the high school, and he went on bike rides and played catch, and watched movies with Lainah and Addy...and grandma spent time holding Emma, and reading books to the kids, and talking with me, and...being such a great sport and letting my girls give her a manicure too! 

 

Brooklynn chose a creamy yellow with white tips for Grandma's nails.  What a fun memory!

 

Everyone loves little Emma.  I don't think she was ever alone for a second, there was always someone holding her, or laying down right beside her.  She is such a sweet little spirit.

 

Here she is snuggled up in her bed...such a perfect little baby girl.

 

And on this afternoon, I think grandma held her for about three hours while she slept and slept and slept.  It was awesome.

 

Who says boys don't like to hold babies?  Taylor is so sweet with her.  Sometimes when she cries, he just swoops her into his arms, holds her close, and quietly talks to her.  I love it. 

 

During grandma and grandpa's visit, they brought birthday gifts for Addy...here she is reading her new book about colors! 

 

Addy loves books...it was the perfect gift.

 

All of us can't get over how cute all of Emma's hair is...and how long she is. 

Asleep again...babies are so beautiful when they're asleep.

 

What a lucky little girl to be snuggled all afternoon with grandma.

 

 

And grandpa had to have his turn too.

Matthew loves to hold Emma too.  He is a sweet big brother to her.

I was able to rest so much during these first few days home because of grandma and grandpa being here...it was the most restful first week's home that I remember having!  It was so hard to see them leave to go back to Rigby!

A Few of My Favorite Things...

Emma's first week at home flew by so quickly...I made sure to take the time to take pictures of all her little features that change so fast as she grows.  It's so easy to forget how tiny these little ones are at the beginning of life.  Here are a few of my favorite things about one week old baby Emma.

 

It's so sweet how she likes to be cuddled up into a little ball and how she makes little whimpering noises as she sleeps.

She looks bigger than she actually is in this picture.  I love how she's small enough to fit inside this little basket...and how as a newborn she'll stay asleep as I move her around and reposition her.

I love her beautiful rosy colored skin and her chubby little cheeks.  I love that she has lots of dark hair that I can style and brush.

I love her cute little fingers...they are long like mine...perhaps another pianist in the making.

I love how she sucks her bottom lip in while she's asleep...and could those chubby cheeks and little nose get any cuter?

I love tiny little baby ears...and the soft baby fuzz that covers a newborn's body...too precious.

I love how soft her skin is, and how sweet she smells.

I love her tiny little feet and cute little toes...

This picture cracks me up...she is so relaxed and completely comfortable snoozing in her basket.

I love that Emma is such a perfect mixture of our family's features...she reminds me of each one of our older six children...capturing features from each one of them.

I especially love how she grasps onto my fingers with her tiny little hand...completely helpless and completely trusting.

I love her beautiful fingernails...

Happy first week of life Emma! 

And stop growing so fast!  There's no hurry!

Welcome to the World Emma!

The night before Emma was born, Andy took some pictures of me with the kids.  Having a new baby is always bittersweet for me...its the most exciting, wonderful thing...and on the flip side, it makes me realize how quickly my little 'babies' grow up and how they aren't babies anymore.

After all the other kids went off to bed, I stayed up and held my little Addy for a while.  This is the hardest part of welcoming in a new baby...a few seconds after Andy took this picture I burst into tears because my little Addy wasn't going to be my little baby anymore and it broke my heart.  I knew I'd bring a tiny baby home from the hospital, and Addy's cute chubby toddler hands and fingers with toddler dimples in them wouldn't look tiny to me anymore.  She could tell something was going on, because she was my little shadow all day, and just wanted me to hold her.

And here I am, 39 weeks and 32 pounds bigger than I was when I started! 

This is a picture of my "trophy blood" as we called it.  Usually, I don't bleed much because my blood hyperclots, which is why I've had to do two injections of heparin each day during pregnancy...well the heparin was doing it's job because when the nurse tried to do my IV, I had blood everywhere.  This was after she'd tried to clean me up...she even had to change the bed linens.  So of course, Andy had to take a picture of it!  All joking aside, this is the part that always makes me a little nervous...being on blood thinners makes everything a little more tricky...and when I see them wheeling in the extra blood and hemorrhage kit...well, I just try not to think of what could go wrong.

But for the seventh time, everything went smooth in delivery...and we were so excited to finally hold our little one!

They gave her right to me.  Words just cannot express the feelings.

Welcome to the world, Emma Elyse Thuernagle!  She was born at 8:13 am on July 10th,

she weighed 8 pounds, and was 21 1/2 inches long...she was as long as big brother Taylor!  So they tied for our longest babies!  She also has a "birthday twin!"  She was born on Uncle Kyle's birthday...so we foresee some great birthday celebrations in the future!

Here we are, excited and thankful parents!  Our Doctor was such a goof...as he was delivering her, he looks up at me and says, "Oh!!!  It's a BOY!"  Andy and I both said "WHAT!?!"  and then Doctor Lowder just laughed.  What a stink.

Truly, what a little miracle.

And someday she'll kill me for posting this picture of her...just minutes after birth and all swollen up...but the kids and I just love it too much, had to post it!  I love all of her hair, and her chubby cheeks, and I love both of her chins!

Quiet moments with Dad...Andy got to hold her for a good long time...I lost a good amount of blood and was just too exhausted to stay awake.  Andy worried over me for a few days because I didn't have any color in my cheeks and was really weak.  Two weeks later, I am still trying to find my energy...but the color is back so all is well.

I just love baby toes and tiny baby feet!

 

Here she is just after she first opened her little eyes to peek at us!  She was so calm, and loved to listen to me talk to her.

Later that day, Andy brought in the kids to come meet baby sister.  They all loved her of course!  I was so proud of Lainah.  Hospitals scare her to death, she still remembers her hospital stay when she was 3 with pneumonia...and she was so worried about me.  She didn't want me to have to stay, and didn't like the tubes in my arm, but she LOVED little Emma!

Lainah holding Emma for the first time.

Matthew taking his turn with Emma.

I don't even need to explain this one...Brooklynn loved her at first sight!

And Rachey couldn't stop grinning and laughing.  She was so excited!

I loved Taylor's reaction when he first got to hold her.  I just love the look on his face!

Our poor outnumbered boys.  They'll have to really stick together after this!

 

And this picture makes me cry.  My oldest "baby" holding my youngest baby. 

Little Addy had been sleeping in the stroller...when she woke up, I had her climb into bed with me for a while, then we introduced her to Emma.  She really didn't know what to think of her!  I was worried, but the next day when we took Emma home, Addy was so excited to see her and walked right up to her and said in her little 2 year old voice, "Emma?  Do you remember?"  We're all still wondering what these two little girlies must have promised each other before they came. 

Emma was having troubles with amniotic fluid in her throat and tummy...so she'd spit a lot, and choke on it.  I was going to have her stay with me in the room all night, but the nurses wanted to watch her more closely in the nursery.  When they brought her to me in the morning, I laughed at the little sign they had put in her crib... "Spitty." At first, I thought they had nicknamed her "spitty!"

Here Emma is, after her first bath in the hospital.  Her hair curls when it's wet, just like Addy's does...too cute.

And here she is with Dad all dressed in her going home outfit! 

And here we are, so excited to be going home with our little Emma Elyse!