Well, it's been a long hiatus. I should be folding laundry right now, but I felt inspired to write. Warning: this post is a long one. Our summer, aside from being extremely busy nonstop, can be summed up in one word: CHANGE. While change is good (and in the case of adding Aaron to the family, wonderful), change is also very stressful. That's a key reason why the blog has been empty for so long. Stress - too much going on, too little quiet time :P
I guess I should step back and log Aaron's birth (because it's pretty awesome, actually) - so for those who don't like gory details, skip to another paragraph. My water broke Sunday, May 27th at 9:45 after two hours of 10-12 minute apart contractions. The nurse midwife called me twenty minutes after my water broke and during the wait, my contractions stayed steady at 10 minutes apart...until I was on the phone with her, at which point they immediately jumped to 3 minutes apart! We still had Samuel, needed to do some last minute packing, and it was pouring down rain outside. My mom hopped in the car and headed toward our house, taking about 30 minutes due to the downpour. This whole time, my contractions were steady at 3 minutes apart. Mom arrived by 10:30ish and we got Samuel around and out the door within 10 minutes. At 10:43, I stopped counting contractions, as we were loading the car and heading out the door. It takes approximately 5 minutes to get to the hospital...in that time, I had 4 contractions. We almost ran a light, but Mike decided not to...which was good because right after the light turned green, we saw a cop pull up to the same intersection. From the car door to the hospital room, I had another four contractions. The nurse asked me to change once we got into the room, but I had two contractions before I got my shoes off, so she ordered me to just get in bed. The good news was that the nurse midwife, Denise, was on the floor already! Because she walked in the room, said "I just talked to you!" and "OH! You're CROWNING!" I remember looking around the room and noting the people present "nurse, nurse, midwife, husband." With all parties in place, I decided to push and 3 pushes later, I had a beautiful baby boy with a full head of hair. One nurse looked at the other, "Birth time 11:06." The other nurse replied, "What time do we call admittance?" "11:03???" Mike said, "It's a good thing I didn't run that red light or that cop would have delivered this baby!" And 23 hours later, we finally named baby boy "Aaron Dorsey." Aaron because it's the name of a strong biblical character and Dorsey to honor my 100 year old grandmother, as it was her father's name.
For those who skipped the birth story, you may now rejoin! The day after Aaron was born, we found out that Samuel had decided it was a day for new beginnings - he climbed out of his crib for the first time that night. All the experts say that when the kid climbs out once, it's time for a toddler bed. So, Samuel got a new brother and a toddler bed all in one day. How exciting! And STRESSFUL! For everyone, not just Samuel, because as it turns out, toddler beds do not restrain toddlers AT ALL, so they can get out of bed as often as they like and run up and down the halls screaming. So, we got a new baby who woke 3 times per night and a screaming toddler who wouldn't stay in bed.
Add to that stress the fact that a kid in Samuel's daycare got pinworms the Friday before we had Aaron, so we decided to keep Samuel home from daycare for a week (you can't treat new babies for pinworm, nor their nursing mothers), thus disrupting his routine. New baby, new bed, new temporary routine.
We sent Samuel back to daycare a week after Aaron was born and things settled down for a couple weeks...until Samuel got a horrible diaper rash on his bottom (involving screaming every time we changed him), and we decided that we had to potty train him once and for all because we couldn't stand to see him in so much pain. So, we kept him out of daycare so we could use just underpants (pull-ups were required until he was potty trained at daycare). New baby, new bed, ANOTHER change in routine, and now we were thrown into the h*ll that is potty training a strong-willed child, who still wasn't sleeping well thanks to the new bed.
Potty training went amazingly well the first three days, but on the fourth day, he started to fight me. At first, I thought we could just work through it and if he wet himself enough, he'd eventually "get it." That was, until I realized he was intentionally having accidents whenever I attended to Aaron. Talk about control of one's urine! The potty training at home went on for 3 weeks, during which time we had a nice visit from Grandad (a post for another day). After the third week, I decided I had to send the kid back to daycare because he wasn't going to back down with me. Do you blame him? Talk about screwing up his life!
I took him back to daycare and said, "Phyllis, he's in undies. We know he'll do great for you because he's not mad at you. He has enough control to pee on the floor on command when we're busy with Aaron. You won't have that issue. Good luck!" And sure enough, he did great for her...and he'd come home and have accidents left and right for us and would fight us to use the potty. It was torturous, but we survived.
Aaron and I got a relatively quiet three weeks home with Samuel back in daycare and we enjoyed that a lot! Then, we had a several day visit from our Texas cousins, which was really fun, but changed Samuel's routine again because I kept him out of daycare much of that week. Another week back in daycare, and then our family went on a vacation, where we trekked all over Indiana and Michigan...this apparently also caused stress for Samuel, although the trip had some very nice perks for all of us. However, during vacation, we finally realized that Samuel was completely overtired from a summer of not sleeping well, and we had to build a new, much earlier bedtime routine to get him back on track.
We got home from vacation Thursday, had Aaron baptized Sunday, and I went to work that Monday after 12 weeks off. Aaron joined Samuel at daycare and the countdown to Samuel's first day at preschool began. Two weeks after Aaron went to daycare, we moved Samuel to an all-day preschool program. Yeah...after all that change this summer, we actually decided to put him through one more major change. Evil, I know. But at this point, it was like, "hey, let's just rip off the bandaid!" So, we're a week into preschool and Samuel is adjusting. He's also peeing and pooping on the potty with little resistance to us, and is finally (most of the time) in a pretty good bedtime routine (although, it takes a present and devoted parent two solid hours to get him to sleep). He still complains about going to preschool, but once he's there, he slips right into the routine and always seems to be having fun when I arrive to pick him up. His teachers say he is adjusting well and we're getting the routine down.
Giant sigh of relief! We survived the craziest summer of our lives and honestly, Samuel is a trooper! He had a lot to cope with in his toddler-sized life. I hope we NEVER experience that much change in such a short time-frame again. I'm sure we will, but I'll always look back to this summer and remember we survived it, too :) The saving grace for us this summer is that God blessed us with an absolutely wonderful baby. He's very laid back and sweet. We would have absolutely lost our minds if he had been more difficult!
We are daily grateful to God that He brought us through all this and proved to us that we have the strength to raise our boys, even through tough times (which I'm sure we will have many more of as they grow!).
I honestly will try to get pictures up soon! I've gotten some awesome ones of our beautiful boys this summer!
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