Zoie's Tap Video

January Watch Day

On the last dance day of the month, the dance studio hosted a "Watch Day" for families. Vance, Arya and I stayed to watch. The girls did tap first. Wow! Zoie has improved so much since I last saw her dance in November. She was listening and doing all the correct steps. But, as you will see in the video at the end of the post, she looses it when she stops watching the teacher or assistant. Vance did a great job for watching and waiting for 40 minutes. We left when the switched for ballet.

Notice all the girls are doing the correct step. It is the "flap".

Watching and waiting.

Getting ready to jump. She has some difficulty doing the steps on her right foot, but she amazed me today!

10 day check up

Arya had her 10 day check up. She is great! She already weighs 8lbs. 9oz, so weight is definitely not an issue. That is the biggest concern at this time for the doctor. Now we don't have to go back until she is 2 months.

Welcome Baby Arya Party!

Friends and Family:

We will be hosting an open house on Saturday, January 31 from 2-5pm.
Stop by to see the new baby and visit with us.
Hope to see you!

Quirky things

I have lots of time to think of meaningless stuff . . . like this:

1. Each kid (excluding Zoie, of course) has 3 letters from the middle name of the previous born in their first name.
Zoie Aviendha
Vance Ryan
Arya Joann

2. Zoie and Arya both have 3 vowels (depending on your view if y is a vowel or constant. . .pretend it is a vowel for my sake) and 1 constant.

3. Both Vance and Arya were born on Sunday.

I am sure I will think of more, give me time. It has only been a week.

Where's Arya?

As we were getting ready this morning to take Zoie to preschool, I put Arya in a little rocker outside the bathroom. When I finished up, the kids needed to brush their teeth. I open the door and the baby is MISSING!!!!
I say (pretty freaked out) "Where is the baby?"
They both look at me and say "I don't know".
"Vance, where is the baby?"
"I pay" ("I play" for those of you who are Vance challenged with his limited language)
"Is she in the play room?"
"No, my room"
So I go down the hall and sure enough, Arya's chair had been pushed down the hall and into the kids' room right next to Vance's pillow and the end of his bed. I don't know if he was on the bed looking at her or playing with her. Only he knows. . . .

One week later . ..

One week later my princess continues to amaze us. She is filling out her little frame. She is a noisy sleeper. For other moms, you forgot the little noises babies make when you first bring them home. Are they breathing? Are they OK? Are they awake? This one makes all types of noises and makes me think she is awake and needs to be feed. Instead, I roll out of bed to a see a sleeping little one. Arya loves a poopy diaper. If I change it, then it is an indication to fill it up again. But sometimes we are fooled and quite surprised by the air she can blow out the rear end. She is sleeping 2 or 3 hours in the day and night.

And my other wonderful children respect that mom does not like to be awake early in the morning . . they play together and come in to check on me. But lately I have also had a flu bug so I just want to sleep and lay in bed. Today's indication to get up was Vance bringing in the ice cream scoop at 9am.

Zoie put her crown on Arya.
Zoie picked out Arya's clothes today.

Kids and Kisses

Arya is here to shine!

Arya slept 3 hours after her doctor visit, despite getting in and out of the car so we could get a few things at the store.

I forgot how cute baby girls are! Arya has Zoie's bunny slippers on and I just love the purple and pink that Vance did not get to wear.

I love this pix. I have a similar one with Z & V

Arya's 1st check up

Arya had a great 1st check up with Dr. Roger. My little parade marched down the hall to her appt, with Zoie as the leader. We barely fit in the patient room.

She is still 20 inches long.

She now weight 8lbs 1oz. On Sunday night, her weight had dropped to 7lb 14oz. Dr. Roger was impressed that she had already hit her low for her weight was on the way back up.

All other physical features checked out good. We go back in one week.

I must be . ..

I must be blessed . . ..

Night 1 (Mon 1/19): After getting home at 1:30 on Monday and Zoie and Vance arriving home to hold Arya, life needs to quiet time and they needed to go to bed. By 9pm, we had all 3 asleep in bed. I just thought "This must be a miracle". Arya slept some throughout the night, but not much.

Night 2 (Tues 1/20): By 8pm, Arya was asleep after napping throughout the day. This gave me time to read to both Zoie and Vance and give them my time. On this night all 3 were asleep by 9:30pm. Arya slept longer so I got about 2 hours of sleep in a row.

Night 3 (Wed 1/21): Vance was asleep by 8:15pm. Ty and Zoie were asleep by 8:30pm. And Arya is lying next to me on the couch at 8:40pm.

Her Name . . .

Arya . . . comes from the Eragon book series. It is a Persian name meaning friend and faithful.
Joann . . . is my middle name
Youngren . . . well think about it :)

Welcome Baby Arya!

So 5 days early, the newest addition to our family arrived. She is Arya Joann Youngren. She was born Sunday, January 18 at 12:45. Even though she was early, she tipped the scale at 8 lbs 4 oz. I was expected a 6lb baby since I did not feel as big as I did with Vance, who was 8lb 13 oz.

So here's a recap of what happened . . .

Jan 12 through 16 was my last week of work. I was teaching photography and took my kids on field trips throughout Whatcom Co. and Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo 4 of the 5 work days. Every day I walked at least 1.5 miles. By Friday, I felt great! And I had lost a couple pounds too.

Saturday afternoon we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese. Big mistake! Ten million people. So we played games for a while, then went to dinner at El Gitano. After we got home, I knew something was just not right. I told Ty we would have a baby tomorrow or Monday. And I started to make a plan for an early morning situation, which included a call to the neighbor to see if he could sit with the kids while one of our parents got here.

Starting at 2am, I could not sleep. I was up at least one an hour. Then at 6am, "Oh this is the part the sucks", I thought to myself as the contractions started. Everyone slept in this morning until 8:30am. At 7:45am, I called Ty's parents to come get the kids and said we would probably need to go when they got there. But when they got there, Ty and Bill had bacon and eggs and a nice 30 minute conversation until Ty looked over and saw me in great pain on the couch. Finally we headed out about 9:20. By this time, I looked at the ditigal clock and noticed the contractions were about 3 minutes apart. That's a little too close. Oh well.

In Triage, they checked me and I was already dialated to 5cm. The nurse looked at me and said, " I see you are in a lot of pain. And since we are not sending you home, let's get you moved". Good idea!

By the time I was moved (wheeled) across the hall, I waited and waited for the "pain guy" to give me an epidorual. He took a long time. Now I was dialated to 8cm. They called the doctor again to see if he was on the way. Once the pain guy hooked me up, life was better--my contractions were "gone" and the labor process slowed.

Once I started to push, it was about 7 big pushes and out she came. The nurse says "And it is a . . . . . . (oh she was about to get my foot in her nose) it's a girl". Thank goodness. No one else had said anything about the sex of the baby.

They put Arya under the heat lamp and she just looked around. No cries.

And the 2nd quarter of the NFC championship was still on. I said "it's not even half time" :)

And now we have another baby in our lives. She is wonderful.

Always a first. . .

I was doing laundry today. I put Vance's poopy sweat pants in the washer yesterday. When I was transferring the clothes from washer to dryer, there was a smell. It was "that" smell. I really thought nothing of it and put the clothes to dry. In the end, I found my "clean" clothes to be dirty from "that" smell. There was a nice hard round poop ball couresty of Vance that got washed and dried. So I had to rewash the clothes and scrub out the dryer as it smelled of poop. Ty, someone who can't smell anything, said he could smell the dryer and it's "new" poop smell. Yuck!

15 more days!

I have 15 more days, according to nature's 40 week pregnancy calendar. I can't imagine this baby wants to stay in any longer. She knows there are other kids to play with and that is felt during the nights with me. The baby stretches her legs and arms and body as much as possible. This is not what the other 2 did. I have weekly doctor visits now until we have our new addition.

Vance has found a new love with Gala apples. Better yet, the little boy pushes his red chair up to the fridge, opens the crisper, gets an apples and closes the door. I don't have to help him. He eats around the apple and up from the bottom.

One of my favorite photos. This is Uncle Vince. His brother was Vance, who our son is named after.

As we pulled up to Vince and Noree's for dinner, 2 bald eagles sat in their tree.

Zoie starts school

On Tuesday, Zoie, Vance and I visited an "integrated" preschool program in town for her to be enrolled in. Today she went by herself and had lots to talk about on the ride to Nana's to spend the night. During our Tuesday visit, she shared snack time, music time, story time, and free play. Vance even played with 2 other boys, whose language skills are about the same as his. It was fun to watch him interact with other kids cause that is not something he does often or willingly. (Zoie loves to play at the kids center at Fred Meyer, but not Vance)

At the end of our Tuesday visit, we walked out with the other students, who all have special needs, as they were headed to the "short" bus. A 1000 questions came up about why she could not ride the bus home. Then, with huge tears rolling down her cheeks, she says "Mom, how could you do this to me" (referring to not letting her ride the bus). How do you explain to a "smart" 4 year old that "special" kids get to ride the bus without telling her she is not special? So I tried other explanations. No good. Today on the way to school, she talked about how close her school was to our house. Bingo!!! I told her that kids who live far from school get to ride the bus. That must have been OK cause there were no tears upon Wednesdays pickup.

At this time, Kindergarten will be an easy transition for her in the fall and for me. I was fine with taking her and leaving her with another teacher. And surprisingly, Vance was cool with leave her at school. He does OK with dropping her off at dance too, but he loves to run around with all the girls.