Madelyn Brooke Zellers- 7/7/09

Hey guys! We are finally back from the hospital and it has finally calmed down enough for me to have a free second to blog and write about our new little addition. Madelyn Brooke was born on July 7, 2009 at 10:26 at night. She weighed in at 6lbs 2ozs and 18 inches long! She is tiny, but VERY strong! She has a head full of black hair (which is always fun for the mom:). Now for our story...

I was 39 weeks when I went to the doctor on Monday. He said that I was dilated to a 4, almost a 5, and 80% effaced! I knew I could go at ANY second. However I had been at a 4 for TWO weeks and nothing was happening! So I was getting pretty impatient to say the least. So on Tuesday morning, I decided to take the good old Castor oil to see if I could get my contractions started. I took the Castor oil at 1pm. It made me pretty sick a couple of hours later, but it did its promised job because I started having regular contractions at about 6pm that night. They started out about 5-10 minutes apart so we knew we needed to get to the hospital QUICK. Geoffery was running around like a wild man freaking out and I kept saying that this isn't it. I was sick of false labor by this point. Well my mom and Geoffery knew better so we got to the hospital by about 7pm. They continued being about 5 minutes apart. Sure enough I was in labor this time.

After about 3 hours of laboring, little Madelyn was born. The doctor said he'd come back every hour or so to check on me and the next time he came in he was delivering me. Let's just hope the rest of my labors go that fast because it was wonderful! I was in labor for 17 hours with Grant and it was NOT fun!

We are doing well now adjusting to our new life. Today is my first day doing it on my own with both Grant and Madelyn. Grant is just in LOVE with his baby sister. He wants to hug and kiss her ALL the time. He had the best reaction I could ever hope for. I was really worried about how this would affect him, but he has loved every minute of it. So here are some pictures of our beautiful baby girl and us at the hospital.

Here I am at 38 weeks I believe (when I originally thought I would go any second:)


Proud brother!


The banner Abby put up when I came home from the hospital! (Thanks Abby!)

Updates...

We are alive! I promise! I have just been busy and well, tired:) Whenever I get a free moment by myself I much rather take a nap then blog. But I promise to do better. We are doing well. Grant is getting so verbal and independent. It's so fun to see him grow up and mature EVERYDAY! He's always surprising me with new things he knows. He catches on to everything me and Geoffery do, even when you don't think they're listening:)

So I'm 35 weeks pregnant TODAY! Yeah! It's going by fast, and well also creeping each day. It's hard to explain. But the baby is doing well. They have me come in every week because she's so small. We do a stress test everytime I go and an ultrasound. I just went yesterday and they found that the amniotic fluid is a little low. So I have to drink 12, 12ozs. of water a DAY! I'm going to the bathroom like literally every 10 minutes! It's crazy. I'm so sick of water I could puke. But if this works we can hopefully keep her in there until I'm full term. Otherwise they will induce me on MONDAY! YIKES! So I ran home and washed all her clothes (not that they will fit for a while) and cleaned her swing, bouncer, and carseat. It's nice not having to buy all that stuff with your second. So we will see what happens. The ultrasound estimated that she only weighs about 4lbs 10 ozs. so she will be SMALL, but hopefully healthy! She seems to be doing great looking at the ultrasound and the stress test so they're not to worried about her. So I'm just staying home this weekend and taking it easy with my old hospital cup near by to drink...ALL DAY! It's a full time job just drinking and going to the bathroom! I also ran to the store to buy some premmie outfits. They're just so stinking small! I really hope that once she's born she'll put on the weight. Grant was 8lbs so having a small baby will be new.

Anyways, that is whats going on in our life. We're pretty boring. I have some posts that I would like to post, but well I just don't have the engery to download my pictures:) We went to St. George for a week (lots of pictures) and that was a ton of fun to get out and away for a while with just the three of us. We figured it would be our last outing out together before the baby comes. It's finally warm here, but without any grass in our yard, outside hasn't been the best. Hopefully one day we will have a yard for Grant to play in:) We're currently working on that.

Well that's our life right now in a nutshell. Pray for us that drinking all this water will help so that little Madelyn will continue to grow!

Easter 2009

Before I post a million pictures from this weekend, I'll give ya a quick overcap. We went to Logan to my parents house for Easter. It's been like 4 months since we've seen them (well since Christmas) because they've been in Georgia, but they're finally back! It was so good to see them and just hang out. Grant became very obsessed with his Juju and Papa. The weekend consisted of cooking, a little shopping, and a LOT of catching up- TAlkING! We really had a good time. We also had a fun little easter egg hunt, which to my surprise Grant caught on pretty quickly and really got into it. The Easter Bunny also came to visit Grant after church. We didn't want to wake up too early with 9am church. Overall I couldn't of asked for a better easter, so thanks mom and dad for hosting it all for us!

Monica's Bridals...

So I've finally finished editing Monica's Bridals that I took like seriously 5 months ago. I'm happy with the way they turned out. I learned some new tricks on photoshop that really helped them turn out better than the way I was editing before. Photoshop can be tricky because there's about a million ways to do one thing that will give the same effect, but some work better than others. Anyway hope you enjoy!

Baby Stuff...

I have been spending sooo much time online looking for baby stuff. I thought I would post some of the stuff I have found. Some of them are SUPER cute and I just had to share with everyone.

1. So I'll start off with my favorite bassinet I found at Wal-mart. Here it is:

Now the reason I LOVE it is because it can change into a changing table (I can use it when she's done sleeping in our room), it has wheels so I can roll it into multiple rooms, all the storage for diapers and etc., and the basket comes off so I can take it downstairs easily with me during the day. I LOVE the multi-funcitionality of this bassinet. I can't wait to order it! YEAH! You can find it here. Plus free shipping with Wal-mart if you order site-to-store. Gotta love wal-mart!

2. Second favorite thing is a DURABLE diaper bag. I'm soooo hard on my bags and with Grant no bag would last longer than 3 months without looking completely worn out and ready to throw away. SO I'm looking for the perfect bag that can put up with my beatings. Gap has a line of diaperbags and they are seriously sooo cute. I love them! You can find it here.


3. I, of course, have been obsessed with shopping for girl baby clothes. When I had Grant, I could never resist going over to check out the girls section as well. I'm pretty sure that's why Geoffery wanted a boy. He knew he would have a problem on his hands if we had a girl. Well he was right. But I have found some pretty cute stuff and I cannot wait to dress her. So far my fav have been these shoes I found from someone elses blog. These are seriously the cutest things I've ever seen!

They have lots of different designs. Check them out here.

4. Also who can forget bedding. I love to look at crib bedding. Even after I bought Grants I look at bedding weekly online. So for little Madelyn, I have been eyeballing the below bedding from Restoration Hardware (yes they have a baby/kids store too and its just as fabulous). I have a tan rocking chair and I think this bedding would make the rocking chair fit better with the room than any other bedding. I also just love the clean lines and simplicity of it.


5. Last but not least is a double stroller. Now I may need your help with this one if anyone has experience with it, but so far I'm leaning towards the Baby Trend Double Sit N Stand Stroller. It's a double stroller that converts into a sit-n-stand. Perfect for us because Grants not quite old enough to do the sit-n-stand part, but probably in a year he will be to that point. I hear they're hard to push, but its a great value and it would be able to grow with us through our different stages. Again comments on this because I don't have any experience with this product. You can see it here.


So please leave your comments with your favorite baby products and let me know of anything out there that you love. Also if any of you have this stuff let me know what you think of it before I go out and buy it!

Grant's Thomas the Train Party

So Grant officially turned 2 on march 6! I absolutely LOVE this age. He is communicating, interacting, and much happier overall! He has told me for the last two months that he wants a train party. So we decided to do the whole Thomas the train decor and he LOVED it! I think it was a dream come true to have trains all over the house. He kept running around saying, choo-choo train! We had all our family over to help us celebrate. And Abby, my sister, even made him a Train cake! She did an amazing job, so Thank you, thank you Abby! Our big present to him will be a big boy bed, that we're still looking for, so he didn't get it on his birthday. But he got lots of other things to make up for it! Thanks everyone for coming and we had a blast!

Also here are WAY too many pictures. Including the promised "belly shot." It's not a good one, but I'll post another one later. Grant was deathly afraid of the candle and wouldn't blow it out, so Tyler helped him do it. It was sooo cute! Hope you enjoy! Also scroll down to some other post that I posted today. I did Valentines Day and Geoffery's birthday!