Here I am, the one that you love!

You don't need my excuses, but I like to list them anyhow. Working full time, three children under seven. 'Nuff said. If I had a laptop cough cough mother's day, I wouldn't have a problem. But Rob sits at the computer while I sit on the couch after the kids go to bed. I am totally okay with this. But that laptop, preferably a Macbook (but hey who's picky?) would come in really really handy....anyhow, here I am.

Kendall is almost done with first grade. Been a tricky year for her. She gets help with reading and math so her test scores are slowly improving. Took her to the orthodontist a few weeks back and she will need some braces. Phase I starts next Tuesday with an expander in the roof of her mouth. She is actually excited about this. I was NOT excited with how she acted at the ortho appt. While I spoke with the ortho, she slouched in her chair and complained about how boring it was. She never acts this way. Well, I shouldn't say never. She slouched and threw a fit the previous Monday while picking out new glasses. "I have to have this pair mom." She must have been in a funk that week. She is a huge help with both her siblings!

Brenym is FINALLY potty trained. He is going to start preschool in September twice a week and he is very excited about it. I'm excited to see if he likes it or not. He loves Cars and Toy Story and Barbies. Hey, when your older sibling is a girl, you tend to play with the toys she is playing with. Much to Rob's dismay, he also wants me to paint his nails when I paint Kendall's. I just try to choose a light color. Who cares, he's THREE!!! I always tell him that daddy doesn't paint his nails and he always tells me he doesn't care because "sissy does". To each their own. He scrapes it off within a day or two anyways. He still doesn't sleep great. Way better than he used to, but he is usually up by 6 am no matter what time he went to bed. FREAK. I always thought Kendall talked a lot, but this kid takes the cake on that one. I think it is physically impossible for him to stop talking.

Like her brother, Morgan has a huge head. I'm not being mean, that mug was in the 99th percentile at her 6 month check up last week. DAMN. 25th percentile for height and weight. I'm surprised she can even hold that thing up. She wants nothing to do with anything besides breast milk. Put one tiny spoonful of anything in her mouth and she just starts spitting until you take her out of the high chair. I swear if I hadn't gone through the pain of having her, I'd swear she wasn't my child. I sure love to eat! She got two teeth while we were in Florida and she loves rubbing her tongue along them. She is in the middle with sleeping. She's not as good as Kendall, but DEFINITELY NO WHERE NEAR as bad as Brenym. Lately she does from 1030-5. I'll take it. Brenym was up every 2-3 hours until he was a year old. THAT SHIT BLEW. She takes a short cat nap in the morning and then a longer nap in the afternoon. We really don't need toys for her because she is usually just watching her brother and sister and what they are doing. She is going through the don't walk away from me stage. Which is endearing, but sometimes mommy has to go potty!

Whoever said that after you have two kids, having a third would be a piece of cake SHOULD BE SLAPPED. Going from two to three kids has been a huge adjustment at our house. We love every minute of it, okay maybe not the time we called my mom and asked her to come over and then told her we were gonna run out the back door when she got there :) Hey, sometimes in our small house the noise and chaos makes us go bonkers.

Baby Morgan

That's what Kendall and Brenym call her. She is smiling a lot lately. Sleeps fairly well (considering that Brenyms sleep SUCKS) almost anything would be better. Eats about 4 ounces every 3-4 hours during the day. She hates a wet or dirty diaper. Loves sleeping on her back!!! Yay!!!! And takes a bottle like a champ. Love her to pieces. I love our alone time after the two big kids go to bed at night!

Morgan Olivia

 Morgan Olivia, you flew into this world in about an hour and a half. I woke up around 130 in the morning with some good contractions so I started timing them. They were about 5-7 minutes apart so I decided to call the dr around 2:40. I also called my mom around then to come be with Brenym. Within about 10 minutes of those calls, the contractions were so strong I could hardly stand up. Rob was awesome and ran around getting everything in the car. They got so bad I got a little irrational and told Rob that we were leaving whether my mom was there or not. :) It takes us about 10 minutes to get to the hospital from our house and within that time my contractions got to about 3 minutes apart. I was chewing on the seatbelt and crying. Rob took an illegal left at the Ottawa exit because I was hysterical at this point so it only took us like 8 minutes to get to the hospital. Rob threw the van into park and dropped me off at the emergency room. I was so embarrassed while sitting there because I was screaming in pain and there were people staring at me. When Rob got inside he asked if they could move me out of that room until the nurse got there from OB. I am so glad he did that. Once I got to the delivery room, the nurses stripped me because I couldn't move. Good thing I'm not shy. They checked me and I was already at a 7. Morgan wanted to be here NOW. I asked for an epidural right away and they started an IV of fluids and told me that I had to get all the fluids in before I could get the epidural and I screamed ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Rob tells me the nurse was milking the fluids into me as fast as she could. I say Rob told me because I had a cold wash cloth over my eyes the entire time. From that point all I remember is screaming OH MY GOD IT HURTS SO BAD and then just regular old screaming at the top of my lungs. When my water broke, it felt like Morgan's head bounced down immediately. It was the weirdest feeling ever. They told us that my water had meconium in it so they needed to get a pediatrician in there to make sure she didn't aspirate any of it. That got Rob a little nervous. With all my screaming he also got lightheaded so he went out in the hall and the nurses gave him some crackers and orange juice. I do remember someone asking if I could sit still for an epidural and I said I'd try. At that point, the dr said she wanted to check me because if I was at a 10 an epidural would be useless anyways. And guess what? I was at a 10. I heard her quietly tell Rob that I needed to start pushing. I went ballistic and pounded on the bed and yelled that I wasn't going to push until I got an epidural. The nice nurse whispered in my ear "honey, I don't think you are gonna have a choice." She's lucky I was in so much pain because I may have punched her. Once I started pushing though, all the pain was gone. It felt AWESOME to push. I played tug of war with a towel with one of the nurses and that really helped me with my pushing. Luckily she only took 20 minutes unlike the hours of pushing for Kendall and the hour for Brenym. Morgan came out screaming loudly and she was way smaller than anybody, including me, thought. She is perfect.
We left our house at 3:08 and Morgan arrived at 4:15. She was very ready to meet us :)

 7 pounds 8 ounces and 19 inches long

 Precious baby girl

 The lovely nurse Emily who listened to an hour of my screaming. She also had to try to put an IV in my hand while I was flailing around. She was SUPER NICE the entire time. 

 Papa wasn't in the room while Morgan was born, but he was right outside the door listening to it all.

 Big sissy

 Grandma and Grandpa Berends and my two girls

 Too much screaming and pushing burst some blood vessels in my eye. Fun times.

 He loves her now, but this was his initial reaction to holding his sister.

 Holy crap I have THREE CHILDREN!!

 Kendall has loved her 100% since the second she saw her!

 Proud daddy

 Nana was there to witness Morgan's crazy fast arrival.

 My 3 loves

 First picture of Morgan. She came so fast daddy didn't have time to think about pictures!

Kendall was so proud that this was the outfit I took her home in.

Huge

As you can see from the pictures above, I am huge, she is huge, we are both huge. Because of the gestational diabetes, I have LOTS of fluid in there. At my ultrasound yesterday it showed that her stomach area is off the charts. AWESOME. So we talked about shoulder distorcia or however you spell it. From what I googled, it means that her head will come out but her shoulders might get stuck and could even break (ouch for her) so they will have to adjust her accordingly and cut me accordingly (ouch for me). They still want to try to keep her in there until 39 weeks, which doesn't make me happy, but they supposedly know what they're talking about. I have my regular doctor appointment today, so I'll be interested to hear what they have to say about 39 weeks. I have been having tons of contractions lately so that is promising.

31-34 weeks

Chubby cheeks like her sister

Dr said Morgan looks about 5 pounds and 15 ounces, which is the 68th percentile. She doesn't think they'll let me go past 39 weeks, but I'm not getting too excited about that just in case I do go later than that. She has some chubby cheeks, quite a bit of hair and some short legs. The reason there is a big chunk out of her forehead in the 3D pictures is because she had her left foot up there the WHOLE TIME. I have another ultrasound on the 19th.

Kate Rob Kendall and Brenym

Around these parts.....

We've had a fairly busy summer, even though we didn't have any true vacation plans. With the hot hot weather in July, we spent a ton of time at my parents pool. Kendall swims all over with no fear, except for the bugs that might be floating on the top. I got her some prescription goggles, which I thought would be outrageous, but they were only $59 at GRO. She doesn't always wear them, but when she's jumping off the diving board, it's nice to know she can actually see the end of it instead of just guessing. Brenym was a little intimidated by the water at first. He would sit on the steps at first and then he'd let you hold him while you walked around or spun him around in the shallow end. And then, he wanted Rob to put a ring on him and he had a new found freedom of the pool. He will kick his way all the way to the ladder in the deep end, climb out, walk to the stairs in the shallow end and repeat. With Rob's parents living on a small private lake, I'm glad that our kids aren't shy around the water. Also glad that both of them don't complain about wearing life jackets.

Kendall has been asking me every single day since I bought her a new backpack when the first day of school is. I remember always being so excited to use my new gear too! I'm hoping that I'm not the only mom to a 6 year old who has the mouth and attitude of a 13 year old. If we say we're having hot dogs for dinner she whines that she wanted macaroni and cheese and if we say we're having macaroni and cheese, she wants hot dogs. It's like this with everything.
US: Kendall it's time for a shower.
HER: Is Brenym taking one? I just took one yesterday (um, no you didn't).
And don't even get me started on her requests to pick out her own outfits. Just because the shirt and skirt are both purple, does not mean that they match. I have a really hard time letting this go!!!

We have really started to go back to the ideas from the book 1-2-3 Magic. Between her whining, complaining or arguing about everything, I was at my wits end by the time bedtime rolled around and I'm only with her for a few hours at night! When we get to 3, I get to take those freaky Monster High dolls until the next morning. I figured that asking her to quit WCA (whining, complaining, arguing) or yelling at her about it wasn't working. And one of the many things I learned from my mom was, if one thing isn't working, you need to find something that works. And I am glad because I'm sure Brenym and Rob were sick of listening to the women of the house go at it.

I always thought Kendall was the biggest talker of a child. Until Brenym came along. That kid will talk to himself. I turned the radio off in the van the other night and heard him talking and I said "hey buddy, who ya talking to." And he surprised me when he said "myself mommy." Hilarious. Rob got him these "shooter cars" and he takes them everywhere. He used to carry around his Easter basket with them, but I finally found a cars backpack that he loves so now he carries them around in there. When his daycare lady puts other stuff in there, he gets SO IRRITATED. The second we get home, out that stuff goes. I'm not sure if he has an intuition about my due date nearing or what, but he has been super clingy with me lately. I had plans on Sunday night and he kept saying "i'm getting my shoes mom." When I told him it was just for girls he looked at me with a sad face and said "mommy don't go." I'm sure it makes Rob feel liked chopped liver. But, um, mom's are awesome! ha ha

Found out Monday that I have gestational diabetes again. Must be when I have a girl?!!?! So I meet with a specialist on Tuesday to get the finger poker thing and a dietician to give me tips of what to eat, what not to eat and when to eat it. I have a feeling daily trips to get ice cream are NOT in the diet. I have been trying to eat a lot more veggies, but a carrot just doesn't cut it when all I can think about is a snickers. oooh snickers......

Finally - NO TRAINING WHEELS!!!

It took some, okay a lot of tears, and me feeling like I would NOT be getting the mom of the year award because I literally had to pull her out of her chair and tell her to get on the bike, but she FINALLY rode her bike without training wheels. I don't know who is more excited, her or me!

Weekend picture recap

Pool pool pool! Saturday we had a half birthday party for the kids at my parents. We were there for 8 hours and Kendall swam for 7.5. She was exhausted but had a blast! Brenym takes a little to ease into the water but once he's in he's a fish too! Sunday was so nice we went back for another day of sun and fun. Last year Kendall would only go in the deep end if she was going off the diving board. This year she is in the deep end treading water! And I am so happy that she is such a caring kid. My ear has been hurting all weekend so I was napping on the couch at grandmas and she came in and started rubbing my arm like I do when she isn't feeling good. When I peeked at her she smiled and asked if I needed her to get me anything. What a little sweetie.

Baby Girl Pictures

I didn't want to load all of these on Facebook - so I thought I'd put all the pictures on here! Kendall came to the ultrasound with us and I'm so glad we took her. She went to Brenym's too. This little girl would NOT stop moving. It was so hard for the US tech to get a great picture because the minute she tried to take it, she would move. For a minute there, she said that she kept trying and trying to get a "goods" shot, but baby wasn't showing 'em (not like her mom) so I was getting a little worried, but obviously I was happy that everything was checking out normal. Finally, at the END of the ultrasound, she found the GIRL parts. Kendall's reaction was awesome. She asked if she can sleep in her room and then said "oh look how cute she is!" And she was practically jumping around in her chair. She wore her light up Sketchers so the dark room was lighting up with her jumps! Dad showed his feminine side and teared up a little. awww. And then he jumped back to reality and said "this isn't good for the checkbook." :) I have almost all of Brenym's old stuff, but I kept none of Kendall's. LET THE SHOPPING BEGIN!