The Bump

During this pregnancy, I took pictures of my growing belly every 2 weeks. It's not the best quality or the most consistent (we moved and my background changed from the bathroom door to my shower curtain), but I think it's kind of fun to see how big my belly got.

Little Man

While everyone else was at church on Sunday, I took some pictures of Henry for his birth announcements. If I've learned one thing about photography over the years, it's that you have to take a gazillion pictures in order to get a few really good shots. Babies aren't really the most cooperative. I did manage to get some decent pictures of Henry to use.





But a lot of the pictures look like this. My mom told me that he looks like he's trying to give me "the bird" in this one. hahaha!


And this one just makes me laugh. This kid makes so many funny faces.

Belated Birthday

Greta turned 5 during the week that we were staying up in Oklahoma City. We took the girls to the science museum on her actual birthday and let her pick out a present at Target since all of her real gifts were back at home.






My mom has been visiting this past week to help with Henry, so we decided to have Greta's little family party while she was here. I asked Greta what type of cake she wanted and she responded with "a robot cake!". It was not what I was expecting to hear from my 5 year old daughter, but her best friend at school is a boy who happens to love robots. So, I set out to make a robot cake. Lucky for me, I had my mom to watch the kids while I dyed and rolled out fondant. I think it turned out super cute, and Greta loved it.



Greta got some new church dresses, beginning piano books, and some dress-up clothes as gifts. She had fun hanging out with Grams this past week and was sad to see her leave today.

Henry Christopher Clayton

While I have a minute, I thought I would write about Henry's birth. I had been getting pretty uncomfortable and on Saturday the 4th, I decided that maybe I should just go to the hospital to get checked out (I did the same thing with Jade). The girls went to a friend's house and Brian and I headed over to the hospital around noon. They checked me out and decided that I was in active labor (dilated to a 4), so I was admitted and prepped for delivery. My doctor wasn't on call that day, so the physician was Henry Ramirez. We had to laugh at the fact that his name was Henry. He thought we had chosen a very good name for our baby. By 4:15 pm, I was dilated to an 8, so Dr. Ramirez broke my water. Henry Christopher Clayton was born at 4:51 pm. He was 6 pounds 9 ounces and 18.5" long. Henry was grunting pretty bad, so they took him off to the nursery to check him out. They determined that he had respiratory distress since he was technically born a little bit premature (he was 36 weeks and 6 days), but they didn't have the facilities at our hospital to care for him.

The pediatrician decided that it would be best for him to be transferred to the children's hospital in Oklahoma City (which is 1.5 hours away...ugh). So, they discharged me, and Brian and I waited anxiously for the helicopter crew to arrive and work with Henry. It took awhile, but they eventually had him all hooked up and ready to transport (I'm not looking forward to getting the bill for his helicopter ride). Brian and I drove up to the hospital and arrived at about 1 am (it was a very long night).



After making sure he was okay, we found a motel for the night. The next day we were able to secure a room at the Ronald McDonald house, so we drove back down to Ardmore to pick up Greta and Jade and then we drove back up to the city. I was very grateful to have a free place for all of us to stay, but some of the rules were really annoying and hard to follow (needing to be in the same room with the girls all the time, no kids allowed in the kitchen, no food in the bedrooms...) We both lost a lot of patience and got very frustrated at times, but we managed to survive. Henry spent 8 days in the hospital. He started out with an IV, oxygen, and a feeding tube. He also had to do a little UV treatment for his jaundice.


Brian and I took turns visiting him while the other person tried to keep the girls in line. During the week, he was weaned off all of his tubes except for feeding.


In order to be sent home, he had to finish a specified amount of milk from a bottle for a 24 hour period. This is the main thing that frustrated Brian and what kept Henry in the hospital for a couple of extra days. After one week, he finally decided that he was hungry enough to finish those bottles and on the 12th, he was discharged and we were able to take him home!


I'm soooo glad to be back home. It was one of the longest weeks of my life! We're grateful that Henry is doing well- although he's being kind of stubborn about breast feeding because all he had in the NICU were bottles and tubes. I'm hoping that he'll get the hang of it soon. He's a sweet little guy and we're excited to have him in our family!

Bloody Nose

When I woke Jade up this morning, it looked like someone had been murdered in her bed:


Luckily, it was just a bloody nose. But her face, hands, and hair were covered in dried up blood. Yuck. Our apartment was built in the 70's and it's kind of drafty, so the heat is running a lot of the day. As a result, the air always feels very dry. I had a couple of bloody noses when we first moved in, but this is Jade's first. Hopefully this isn't a recurring problem. blech.

Baby Shower #2

Brian called me this morning from work and said that it was really important that I come to the clinic at noon because there were some insurance papers that I needed to sign. It turned out that it was all a lie and it was just his sneaky way of getting me over there for a baby shower that the girls at his work were throwing for me. I was totally surprised! First of all because apparently Brian had known about it for a couple of weeks and kept it a secret and secondly because I really only know two or three of the ladies that he works with. But I ended up with a ton of clothes for Henry as well as some more diapers and blankets. I don't have pictures from the actual shower because I don't carry my camera around, but I took this shot of everything once I got home.


Brian says that they all just like an excuse to have parties at work (and by parties, he means cake) and women like buying little baby clothes. I think he may be right.