Macy & Bentley

When we were at the hospital the girls really pretty stand offish with Bentley and I. They didn't know what to think of Bentley and I think it freaked them out a little bit to see me in the hospital bed/gown. A nurse came in while they were there to check vitals and started ewing and awing over the girls. I don't exactly remember how it came up but the nurse started telling Macy how if she was mean to Bentley they were going to come and take him away, so she better be nice. I get what she was trying to do, get Macy to be nice and talk to the baby, but she did it in the wrong way. After we came home Macy was so nervous about anyone being mean to Bentley- she was afraid they were going to come take him. There was one time I needed to wake Bentley up to eat and I said "Alright I need to wake up Bentley" and Macy got a very nervous look on her face and said "Don't yell at him Mom..." then any time he would cry/fuss she would tell me to make him stop. There was even a time London was standing by him and had her hand on the bouncy seat and Macy pushed her and told her to "be nice to Bentley!" I finally put all the pieces together and started asking Macy questions about being nice to Bentley and what would happen if someone was mean to him. She started telling me about the nurse and how they would take him away. We had a nice talk about how no one is going to take him away, if they girls were mean to him they would get a time out or be in trouble, but Kyle and I wouldn't let someone come and take him away. After Kyle came home from work I had him to talk her about how we would protect Bentley. Since we've gotten that whole thing squared away Macy has really taken to her little brother.

She is still pretty protective over him, when he cries or is fussy she always tries to find his paci or tell me that he's not very happy. She is an awesome helper and will get anything for him that he needs. If London is ever by him she always watches her to make sure she's not hurting him. This morning Bentley was laying on my bed while I did my hair and Macy kept giving me the play by play of what London was doing by him- who needs a baby monitor when you have Macy? :) She really is sure a great big sister, she always has been.

Preschool

Macy started PRESCHOOL August 2nd. She's 3 1/2 and a very busy girl. She is so smart and I didn't feel like I was giving her enough to do at home or enough time playing with other kids. The preschool that the school district here does is extremely cheap and it's only 3 hours a day for 3 days a week. I figured we could do that. The first day she was pretty hesitant to be left, but the teacher told me I could stay a little bit so we hung out and played with the toys for about 45 minutes until it was time to go play outside. I let Macy know I needed to go home and feed Bentley while she went and played on the playground. She gave me a hug and told me goodbye. It was a great first day, she didn't want me to leave at first but then told me it was okay- I was proud of her. 

Coming Home

I downloaded the pictures from the hospital and noticed that I forgot to add these pictures. I love them. With the girls I didn't really get "hospital" pictures, and with Bentley I made sure we got some. The hospital is such a special time for me, it's just about baby and enjoying the new addition to the family before we have to get back to real life. 

Bentley in his coming home outfit, in the carseat. We got to come home on August 1, 2012.

It's amazing seeing how huge those buckles are and how quickly they get smaller and smaller.

Made His Appearance!

Bentley Bowen Gardner

July 31, 2012

7 lbs 14 oz 20.5 in

We are happy to announce the birth our of little boy, Bentley.

Name meaning: I loved the name Bentley, and Kyle warmed up to it a lot in 9 months. Bowen is the name of Kyle's Mission President as well as his favorite companion on his mission. 

The girls are doing well with him, London finally asked to hold him today and Macy finally said "Goodnight Bentley". It's progress :)

Bentley's Labor and Delivery

::This blog has not been edited, but I wanted to pot it anyway, it's also a detailed labor and delivery story for my record, so if you're not into that kinda thing just skip it:: :)

Since I was 37 weeks I had been having constant contractions. All the time. At my 36 week appt I was 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced and at my 37 week I was 3 cm and 80% effaced. I figured this meant Baby Boy would come much sooner rather than later. Since all those contractions had moved me that far, I figured if they kept going like that he would be here in no time. Sure enough, the contractions kept on coming but they weren't turning into anything strong enough to go to the hospital. At my 38 week appt I was certain that I would have progressed at least some what, but I didn't. Talk about emotional. To have contractions like crazy and absolutely no progression. Ya, I cried. At  this point I was just done. It's one thing to have contractions and progression and a complete different thing to have no progression. My dr had stripped my membranes at my 37 week appt and I and gone into the 38 week appt thinking of asking him again, but I couldn't really talk after he said "yup, same as last week" without bursting into tears (I waited till the car to do that). With it being Kyle's last week at home we were really hoping Baby Boy would make his appearance that week, but obviously that wasn't the plan. This past week he had choir camp and we were for sure he would come then, but contractions kept coming and no labor.

Sunday night I thought I was leaking my amniotic fluid, so we went into the hospital at around 11 on Monday morning to get checked out. I couldn't decide if it was amniotic fluid or not so I just wanted a peace of mind. We got there, they hooked me up, and did the fluid test. The nurse checked me and said that it wasn't my sac because she could feel it bulging, but it would have been my cervix opening and more liquidy discharge from that, but definitely not my water. She did say that wanted to keep me for observation though because I was having contractions that were 2-3 minutes apart (no news to me). They had Kyle and I walk around the hospital for an hour to see if I would make any progression. It may seem silly, but I think we had a lot of fun on our hour long walk. One of the reasons I fell in love with Kyle is because of his ability to keep me smiling and relaxed during situations where otherwise I would be an emotional wreck, and this was one of those times. We walked around laughing, trying to "sway the baby down into my hips" and just kept praying that I had progressed. Our hour passed and we waddled back up to Labor and Delivery. I laid down and the nurse said "well, you're still contracting every 2-3 minutes and there are some pretty hard ones, do you have a really high pain tolerance or something?" Umm... "To be honest, I've had them for 2 weeks so I'm kind of numb to them now" She checked me told me that I hadn't progressed much and she would like me to walk another hour because she really didn't want to send me back to Holbrook with these contractions and she would go call talk to the head nurse and come back in.

After she came back I started crying and told her I really didn't want to walk around again because if I hadn't progressed in the past week I doubt an hour walking would help. I told her I'd been having these contractions for 2 weeks and I was just done. You could tell she felt bad because she obviously could see I either wanted to get admitted and have a baby, or just go home; none of this waiting around stuff. She said she would call my doctor and come back in. After she left I cried a little more and Kyle asked me if I really just wanted to go home or if I would walk some more. I told him I would walk more if they really wanted me too "that's the Alli I know" was his response :)  Yes, good lil' Alli, does what the doctor orders- whatever just get the baby out! is really how I felt :) She came back and I told her I'll walk. She said she had gotten off the phone with the doctor and he said for me to walk again and if I didn't progress he would induce me the following day or later that week. We asked her if he was willing to do it tomorrow why not today and she said it was because he wasn't on call that night and would rather do it the next night when he was at the hospital. Ugh. Okay. So there we went walking again. We started getting friendly with the staff that had seen us walking around all day and made friends with an older gentleman behind a desk- he would give us an update every time we went by of how long that lap took and how many laps we had left :)

Fast forward an hour and back we went to Labor and Delivery. About this time it's about 3:30 pm. I laid down, the head nurse came in and said "Alright, I think you've progressed a little, I'll call you a 4 now. And I'll sweep your membranes.... Okay. Let's go get you a room" :) I honestly wouldn't say I was really in actual active labor, but when it came right down to it they knew with all the contractions it wouldn't take much for me to have the baby. I live an hour away and I am GBS+, so they really didn't feel comfortable sending me home. They admitted me at 4:30pm.

We got into the room, hooked up to the IV, and all the monitors and my contractions were really starting to pick up in intensity. The nurse came in around 5:30 and let me know that if I wanted an epidural in the next 3 hours or so I was going to need to get it now because the only anesthesiologist that was there had a surgery and was going to be tied up. I'm an epidural lover, so they hooked me up before labor really started to get intense. Around 6:30 the nurse came in the check me and I had effaced a little and dilated a little, but the contractions weren't hard enough quite yet. She said she wanted to start pitocin so she called me doctor to see what he thought. Since I'm GBS+ they needed to get all my antibiotics in before baby came, so he wasn't comfortable helping labor along until I got 3 doses, which takes about 6 hours. At the point I need one more dose and they needed to wait another 2 hours to start it. The nurse started pitocin at about 12 and said she was going to start it at 3 mL and see how that worked and she was probably going to need to up it every 30 minutes or so. At this point I was 5 cm and about 95% effaced but not fully effaced yet. The contractions were doing something, but not as much as the nurse would have liked. As soon as she started the pitocin contractions just started moving right along and she didn't need to bump it up at all. My epidural was only working on my legs and the left side of my hips, but I could feel a lot in my right hip- that wasn't comfortable at all. At all, at all. 2 hours later I was at a 9, fully effaced and my water still hadn't broken (side note: The whole time I thought it was funny that we came in thinking my water was broke, not because of contractions. They kept me because of my contractions and my water wouldn't break. Kinda funny). The nurse called my doctor to see if he wanted to come in or if he would like us to call the on call doctor. He let her know he would be there shortly. It's is about 2 o'clock by now and we were just waiting on the doctor. I kept telling the nurse that I was feeling a lot of pressure- like a lot. She kept telling me that she didn't want to check me and risk infection and stuff so she was just going to wait for the doctor to get there.

Dr. Izenberg came in at about 2:50, let me know I was completely dilated and effaced and he was going to break my water. He let me know that Baby was still at -1 station so the contractions would probably need to move him down the birth canal a little bit and walked out. I told the nurse I was still feeling a lot of pressure and so she said we would do some practice pushes. Remember that I have an epidural, and moving can be pretty difficult when your legs are numb.... she didn't help sit me up or anything so here I am laying on my side in the bed and she's telling me to push. I tried and told her I don't have leverage on anything and I can't push laying on my side. I asked her if I could sit up more and go on my back (umm.. DUH I feel like). She agrees, helps me sit up, has Kyle grab a leg, and tells me to wait for a contraction then push. She let me know there was a contraction- I started pushing and she yelled at me to "stop stop stop!" Baby Boy was here :) She yelled for the doctor, the nurses ran in, doctor told me "I'm going to break the bed down, and DON'T push or that baby is going to fall out". I told him I was good, I felt much better now and I didn't really feel pressure anymore :) They got everything ready and told me to slowly push him the rest of the way out. After pushing for 2.5 hours with Macy I was always so jealous of the girls that had like 1 push and the baby was out... I wasn't wrong on being jealous, it's totally the way to go :)

Bentley getting checked out.

Meeting Mommy.

Meeting Daddy

Grandma Carbonneau and Bentley

The next day Granda Gardner, Grandma Carbonneau, Macy and London came to meet Bentley. The girls didn't really want anything to do with him at first. Macy finally decided that it would be okay to read him a story, and London finally decided that she wanted to hold him.

Our hospital is an hour away from our house and family that we live close to, and the rest of our family lives quite a ways from us which means we don't get many visitors at the hospital. Some people may enjoy not having visitors at the hospital, but I always appreciate when we have people that want to see the baby. We were super lucky and had wi-fi in the hospital and got some visitors via google chat.

Here is Bentley meeting some of his Carbonneau cousins.

Other than all that excitement, we really just enjoyed our new baby at the hospital. It was nice not having anywhere to go, no clothes to wash, dishes to clean, meals to cook... I just got to love on my little guy. He didn't spend much time in his basinet :)

I forgot how much I love having a newborn. They are so precious and you can just feel their spirit and how much Heavenly Father loves them, and he must love me for entrusting me with this little guy. I feel like with each new baby I've gotten a stronger testimony of Heavenly Fathers love for us. I can't imagine a stronger love than that for your children and I'm so blessed to have the ones I have.

Summer Vacation

I just realized I never blogged about our summer! It was probably one of the most fun-filled summers we've had so far. It started off with a good two weeks that we hung out around Holbrook and just enjoyed Kyle's time off. We got our front yard nice and cleaned up, planted flowers, and just enjoyed each others company. June 11-13 Kyle and I flew over to San Diego for a much needed "baby moon".  We started the trip out by going to Cinnabon at the airport. 

We went to Sea World, walked around malls, went to the beach, and ate some crazy delicious food. Kyle used foursquare to decide where we would eat for every meal and we found some really good places. Sadly, I don't remember the name buts but we ate at a place that you ordered off an Ipad- that was pretty cool! It was American food; hamburgers, pizza, french fries- SUPER good. There was the crepes place- best crepes I've had in my life. 

We had a "savory" one and a "sweet" one and shared them. We both could have eaten an entire savory one and shared the sweet. We had a Chicago style pizza. They make them by putting the dough, then the toppings and cheese, and last all the sauce; it kind of looked like an inside out pizza! 

Then we tried a breakfast place that served SO much food. Kyle got an omelet and it was seriously the size of a large dinner plate. We were really impressed with everything though and for the most part they were just Mom and Pop places. We HIGHLY recommend using foursquare to find delicious places to eat. 

The 14th My Parents, Chris, Derek, and Uncle Gary drive up in our van and met up with us to start their RAAM journey (4 cyclists leap frogging across the country with crew members to keep them moving and safe). We stayed in this SUPER nice hotel. It was seriously amazing. It was right next to the ocean and the hotel room was more like a really nice condo. It was a safari theme, so there were zebra pictures and comfy blankets, a kitchen with glasses and silverware, a super nice 6 person dining room table, and the master bedroom had a beautiful view with a balcony to the ocean. Definitely the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. Derek and I hung out with the RAAM crew the 14th and headed back home the 15th. We had left the girls with My parents the first part of the week and transfered them over to Mike and Trish's the 2nd part (THANK YOU BOTH!!), it was very nice to get away but I was super happy to get to see them again. While Chris, Kyle, Mom, and Dad were on RAAM I stayed at my parents and hung out and got some visitors. Kati came and stayed with us the first part of the week and Steven and Meghan came and ate dinner with us one night. It was really fun to have Kati and her kids there, it kept Macy and London occupied and made the time pass a lot faster than last year. We were constantly checking facebook and the RAAM blog to see what they were doing and where they were at. They finally made it home the 23rd and we headed back to Holbrook the 25th. 

After we got home it was time to get ready for the Bucket of Blood Half-Marathon and Wild West Days (used to be Old West Days but they changed the name this year). I sold bows again, Kyle was the MC, and my parents and Chris and Kati came to help out with the half-marathon and Chris and Dad rode in the bike race. It's always such a fun event and I'm glad that they come up to hang out with us. 

We had two weeks of a relaxed summer break and after being on the go so much we got kind of bored (go figure). One day we decided to go around Holbrook and take pictures and make a Holbrook Alphabet Book. I'm not going to upload all the pictures we took, but here are a couple good ones.

D is for DINOSAURS

R is for RAILROADS

 Macy being cute on a Dinosaur

V is for VOLKSWAGON

 C is for COURTHOUSE

 H is for HUNT PARK

After our two weeks just chillin' Kyle had his Swing Thing Choir Camp. We were hoping Baby Boy would come during that week, but we waited and waited... and no baby. It was a very fun filled summer that went by SUPER fast. We're hoping next summer is a little less hectic, but just has fun :) We love summer vacation, it's definitely a blessing to have your husband for 2 months. 

The Nursery

Nursery's are so fun. Seriously. Just funness all around. I was really excited to be able to do this nursery before our little guy arrived. I had bought a boy nursery set when I was pregnant with Macy because it was on hardcore clearance and it matched a boy cross-stitch that I had made. It had been sitting in the back of the closet in Macy's room for almost 3 years now. I had the bedding and the room ready to decorate for a boy but for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to get started on the room. It took me forever to decide what color I wanted to paint it, and even then I really wasn't excited and kept putting it off. 

On Pinterest I found a bunch of grey and yellow nursery's that I fell in love with and the sadder I got that I had bought that bedding set. I've turned into a pretty frugal person and I couldn't stand the thought of spending money on this bedding and not using it. I finally decided that it just didn't matter. I got the bedding 4 years ago and I just didn't love it anymore, things change.

 I told my mom my plans of a grey and yellow nursery and she took it and ran with it. There was a week that she could come before they (Mom, Dad, Kyle, Chris, and Uncle Gary) all went on the Race Across America that she could come help me set up the nursery so we started making plans to do it. Some friends had a baby shower planned for that Saturday so we figured we'd just have a "get ready for baby" weekend and jam a bunch of stuff out. I had about 2 weeks to get the room ready for my mom to come with all the fabric to make the bedding so Kyle and I hit the ground running... at that point we only had 10 weeks till my due date! 

This is the room before we started. We had already moved things away from the walls but luckily I remember the "before" pictures before we did too much.

THE WALLS- This room has been the "don't know what to do with this so toss it in there" room since we moved in. The girls sleep in the bedroom at the end of the hall, it's bigger and the door is right across from our room and I wanted to keep them in there, so decided baby boy would just be a little down the hall. The walls were still white from the investor that fixed the house up so it was a pretty blank slate. I picked a grey from our local hardware store and hoped that it would match the fabric that my Mom got. Macy walked in while I was washing the walls (lots of dust from not being used) and helped me. Sweet girl. 

I got this painted in a day, started early and ended late. I LOVE the color. Love love love.

THE CRIB- We were lucky enough to be given a crib when we had Macy, but it was definitely used and the paint was started to chip off. I really wanted a new crib, but decided it would be cheaper to just sand it down and repaint it instead. It took Kyle all week to do the crib, it's a lot of sanding! I'm happy with the way it turned out though. It used to be a drop side crib and Kyle figured out how to turn around some of the drop down mechanisms so it stays in place now. The bedding is all props to my Mom. She really did a fabulous job and we worked out butts off. She looked at some tutorials before she came, but for the most part we just winged it.

 Originally she was supposed to come up on that Wednesday and help with the nursery but only half of the fabric that she ordered came in. The next half of fabric didn't come in until mid-afternoon on Thursday. Our "week" had turned into 4 days, and then turned into 2. We had Thursday night, Friday, and 1/2 of Saturday to complete the nursery. 

Thursday night we started the bumper. We basically just did a big pillow case for the girls bumper and just slid the boy one on. I say "slid" like it was easy, it's not, at all. We accidentally made it too short at first so we had to undo seams to make it the right length in the right spots. Long story short, it wasn't easy! :) but I think it turned out AMAZING. The inside of the bumper is grey corduroy on the longer sides and then a super cute fabric with giraffes on the smaller sides.  The sheets turned out awesome, we made one with big white polka dots and one with small white polka dots, the one in the picture is the bigger dots. The dust ruffle also had a little accident. We accidentally made the part that goes under the mattress too small so we had to redo that. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but we only had a certain amount of fabric to work with and if we messed up again we were going to have to go to Walmart (30 minutes away) which would take time out of our already crunched schedule. Anyway, we had enough fabric to add to it and it turned out just perfect. We used the stripes for the most part and even though you can't see it, in the pleat is the giraffe fabric.  

 THE DRESSER- My original thought was to paint the whole dresser white with the stripes. Kyle sanded it all down and put some primer on it and I decided I loved the way it looked just like that. It looked more white washed then solid white, and with the crib and changing table being solid white I think it's more visually pleasing since it's a little different. I put some grey stripes on the front and we got some new hardware. The original color of grey I got was WAY too light, you almost couldn't tell between the white and the grey. I added some black acrylic paint I had and got this color. Hopefully I never have to touch it up because I'll never get that exact color again. The lamp on the dresser is actually my Great-Grandma Bochat's that was given to me by my mom. It used to be just plain wood color that I painted black a while ago. It used to be in my living room but the dresser needed something on it and this was perfect for it. The lampshade used to be white and we covered it with the polka dot. The box on the dresser was a gift from my mom,  each of my girls have a hat box like it that I keep their baby book, coming home outfit, blessing dress, and other odd and end baby keepsakes- so now baby boy has one. It won't stay there, but it was there from my Baby Shower.

THE CURTAINS- This is a fairly long window that had a super ugly vertical blinds covering it. My budget was fairly small for this nursery so I just got the same cheap mini-blinds that are in the girls room (I like that they match now from the outside of our house) but it's amazing how much cleaner it looks with simple new blinds. We tied in the bumper, dust ruffle, and sheets all the the curtains. The top is the small polka dots, the middle is the same fabric as the dust ruffle, and the bottom is the giraffe fabric. We added some huge ric-rac in between the two bottom panels to add a little something to it, and I love how they turned out.

THE MOBILE- My original plan was redoing the fabric on the girls mobile that hooks onto the crib and making little birdies to hang from it. That way there was still the moving parts and it would still play music.... then I found something I loved on Pinterest. My mom didn't find out my plans changed until she got here and I said "ya... I don't think I wanna do that anymore..." :) I think it turned out amazing. I love to turn on the fan and watch it wave. We already have a music thing that hangs on the side of the crib so I didn't think the moving mobile really mattered. You might have to zoom into the picture to notice but on some places instead of using circles we used animals. There are a couple whales, elephants, and giraffes.

THE CHANGING TABLE- Our changing table was given to us along with our crib and the paint wasn't chipping so all we needed to do was given it a good little wash down. My mom found these baskets at Alco for like $0.50 last time she was down here and they fit perfectly in the changing table and matched the girl bedding really well, you can see them in the "before pictures" in the changing table. We had enough corduroy left over from the bumper that my mom made the baskets new liners. I also didn't have a changing pad sheet to match the bedding, so she made one of those too. Told you, she's amazing. 

WALL ART: I found the embroidery hoop art work idea on pinterest. My mom carted her silhouette up here and that's how we got the elephant and giraffe from the fabric. We still need a couple more to finish it up but I still think it looks great.

After reading all this remember.. we did this in 2 DAYS. We got started around 8am and went to bed around 10pm, working the entire time. I have a couple shelves I still want to put up, art work, and some knick knacks to finish it off, but I'm super duper happy with the way it all turned out.