Steady As We Go

It's hard to believe that five years have passed since Scott and I said our "I do's".  I still remember every moment of our wedding day, from waking up to the rain that morning, seeing each other for the first time just outside of our church with the rain lightly falling above us, running out to the limo under a rainstorm of bubbles from our guests.....you get the picture.  "They" say that rain on your wedding day will bring you good luck.  We had enough rain that day to bring us a century of luck.

However, as we all know, you certainly need more than luck to make a marriage work.  It takes work from both parties,  understanding,  patience and support from your family and friends (just to name a few important pieces that come to my mind). 

Five years ago we committed our love to each other and couldn't wait to see what life had in store for us.  I truly feel God has blessed our marriage and am thankful that we work hard to keep Him a center in our marriage, admittedly some days more than others.  He had a plan for us, though we didn't know it quite yet.  Just a month before our marriage, we were so lucky to be introduced to a wonderful group of people through a study at our church that happened to be in the same boat as us - both in age and relationships.  This group has made such a big impact on the health of our marriage, more than they could possibly know. For that,  I am so thankful to you all and hope that we have helped in some way as well.

In just 5 years, we have had the opportunity to travel, make our house a "home", see our favorite band in countless numbers of shows around the country and most importantly, be blessed to have two healthy and happy children. With the good times also comes the tough. We've also experienced sadness from a miscarriage,  worries over family dealing with serious health problems,  even the possibility of me losing my job while pregnant.  Through it all we've leaned on each other and our faith in God.

There is a line from the song "Steady As We Go" by Dave Matthews Band that we danced to for our first dance as husband and wife:

"When your load gets heavy girl,  I will lift you up"

Scott,  you have more than lived up to this in the 5 years as my husband.  I feel so lucky to have you as my partner in this journey of life and as the father of my children.  Thank you for making me your wife five years ago.  I look forward to every year with you!

Six Months with Addie Rose

**This post was written last week,  just realized I never published it!**

As we're well into her 6th month, I'm feeling....embarrassed.  I can't believe I have been so horrible at documenting our new addition.  Lately the only time I have to share about Miss Addison Rose is sharing a quick picture I've snapped on my phone.  Thankfully I've started a new project for both of the kids (keeping a separate journal for each of them), so their lives ARE being tracked somewhere! ;)

We're still somewhat in survival mode in our house.  Learning to juggle two full-time jobs, the house, a busy toddler and a little baby girl trying so hard to keep up with her rambunctious brother......oh, and we can't forget Koda (who I'm sure is feeling forgotten these days)! Phew!  Let's just say most weekends we're playing catch up.

Addison had her 6 month check up the end of February and she is growing steady.  Staying right around the 22nd percentile in all categories,  she's on the smaller end of the spectrum, but no concerns from her pedi.  She's eating plenty and we actually started her on solids that night.  First food was smashed up avocado and she loved every bite!  She's also tried bananas,  peas and yogurt. 

She's working on sitting up and will last about 5-10 seconds before toppling down.  I imagine within the next month she'll have this trick mastered!

7 months is creeping up quickly,  so I'll leave you with her first 6 month shots :-)

Introducing Addison Rose!

Those of you with multiple children (actually, any children!) will probably understand why it's taken a whole month to introduce our little girl to the blog.  To say we're busy is an understatement!  Friends with just one kiddo right now?  Enjoy it, trust me.  We had no idea how easy our life was with just little P until we added this cutie to the mix.  Absolutely worth it, don't get me wrong.  Absolutely exhausting too ;)

Speaking of Parker, he has taken on the big brother role wonderfully.  Everyday he wakes up asking "where's my baby?" as well as when he returns home from daycare.  It's so dang cute.  He kisses and hugs her goodnight and shows so much love to her already.  I'm curious how it will change once she's old enough to snag his toys?!  We shall see :)

Now back to Addison.....she wasted no time making her entrance into the world, once she decided it was time.  I was 3 days late and awoke Saturday morning, August 10th with a few labor signs.  Contractions started later on that morning, but nothing consistent, so off to Parker's first movie we went!  Contractions continued throughout the day, but they did not really start to "count" (in my opinion) until right around 4pm.  We decided Parker would head to my parents house for the night, just in case this was the real deal, clueless that our little girl would be here in just a few short hours.

After Scott came home, I decided to attempt some rest as I had no idea how long this would last and knew I'd need every ounce of energy.  Netflix was playing in our room, but I was already having a hard time concentrating on anything playing.  Snacked a little as well and at some point Scott ran to get himself a quick bite from Bandit Burrito (I declined, not curious to see how mexican food may reappear !).  Not long after he returned the contractions continued to intensify, so I transitioned to the tub as this was the most soothing during Parker's labor.  I quickly learned that every labor is different as this did not provide the relief I had hoped for.

By 7pm, I decided we should head to the hospital.  We had been in contact with our doula throughout the whole day and informed her of this decision.  I feared we were leaving the house too soon (our goal was for another natural, non-medicated birth like Parker's) and didn't want to end up laboring at the hospital too long.  Boy, was I wrong!

All of us reached the hospital shortly before 8 (I believe) and they sent us to triage.  A few minutes later I started feeling like I needed to push - RIGHT NOW!  We informed the nurse, who checked me right away and informed us that the water bag was bulging and I was dilated to a 9.  This pushed them into high gear and I was wheeled to a room immediately.  They didn't even have time to officially check me in and thankfully the midwife on call was waiting downstairs since she lives out of town.  I don't know the exact details, but from what I recall, I started pushing shortly after getting into the bed.  After about 20-30 minutes of pushing, at 8:49pm, our little girl was born!!  A full pound and a few ounces more than Parker, she weighed in at 7 lbs., 12.2 oz.

Declining to find out the gender was without a doubt the best decision we've ever made.  The pure joy and excitement in the last few minutes before she was born was incredible, a feeling that could never be duplicated.  And for anyone that doubted Scott could wait and NOT look at the envelope providing this information?  I can verify that his look of surprise was genuine, it was truly a surprise to him!

Welcome to the world Addison Rose, we are so happy to have you in our family!

3rd trimester is nearing....

....yikes. Which probably explains why I'm so zonked out tired these days! You know it's a bad sign when your body aches and you're already exhausted by 8 am every morning!

Second trimester has truly flown by for us. Thankfully it has been uneventful and the nasty, all day "morning sickness" has disappeared.

Baby Scholten #2 is growing like a weed and getting stronger and stronger everyday. Late afternoon and just before bed seem to be the baby's active points of the day, so we'll see if that rings true once it's joined us outside of the womb. It definitely has a knack for creeping daddy out when it moves and pokes my belly into such strange shapes. It's such an amazing feeling to experience, the miracle of carrying and growing our little babies are experiences I'll forever be grateful for!

We're still holding strong on Team Green and if Scott has peeked at the envelope, he's doing a great job of hiding it!

Backstory if you haven't heard it yet. Before we reached the 20 week mark, we had the "do we find out the gender?" discussion. I wanted to be Team Green with Parker, but gave in and as we know, found out. This time around, I chose to stick with Team Green (gotta have some motivation in the delivery room now that I know what I'm getting into with labor!) but Scott was still insistent on finding out if we would be blessed with another boy or have a girl. We met in the middle. At the ultrasound, the screen was shut off when they reached that point. They still took pictures, which were put into an envelope and given to Scott to look at his own discretion. I have complete faith that it will be a secret kept until the baby is born and in the meantime, he's having fun with it. Some days he tells me we need to focus on girl names, the next it's boys. Better to have fun with it, I say. :-)

Now that Parker is settled in his big boy room (I'll have to share pictures soon!), we're starting to work on the nursery. Paint color is picked and today we focused on getting the bins of newborn "stuff" out from storage in the basement. I had forgotten just how much "stuff" we had - wow. Let's just say I have a lot of laundry to keep me busy in the coming weeks. Thankfully, squishy newborn cloth diapers are so dang cute. I never thought I would be a person to get excited over that topic, but now that P has outgrown his cloth diapers, I'm strangely looking forward to diapering a tiny little newborn. I'm sure this excitement will have dwindled by say, September? ;)

So I leave you with pictures of our basement as of right now (and a close up of the bin of diapers, seriously, so tiny and cute!).Anyone that enjoys laundry and organizing (or painting!), feel free to stop on by!

Milestone Monday!

Guess what little cutie just told me he "go potty" and then proceeded to actually pee IN the potty?! Nope, not Scott, I'm still training him ;)

Parker did!!! We're so proud and while I know we have a long ways to go before potty-training is done, this is a BIG step.

We introduced the potty to Parker a few months ago just to familiarize him with it and see where it went. So there have been many days and nights of him sitting or standing at the potty only to seconds later say "I done!". However, daycare has been working close with him and even this weekend he told each of us twice "I pooping!" Both times the job was already done, but hey, at least he told us? Gotta start somewhere!

And now I just realized I've devoted a full post to the topic of going potty. Welcome to parenthood, toddler style.

Why hello Terrible Two's, how nice of you to join us...

...Not. And you know what scares me even more? I hear three is worse.

I'm hoping this new attitude is a fluke thing (as the experienced parents are laughing at me while you read this). Who knows, probably not.

Meals the last week have been a complete fail. That toddler phase where you can count on one hand what they will eat? Yep, we're there. Tonight was a handful of shredded cheese and applesauce (the yummy chicken fajitas and grilled veggies went untouched). Last night, I think he ate two noodles. The boy that I thought would always be my perfect eater...not so much anymore.

Spreading his wish to be Mr. Independent across the board, P's favorite response to any question - "No!" After dumping the laundry basket, giggling and shouting "all fall down", this was his response when I asked him to please pick up the clothes. And the same when it's time to pick up toys, etc., etc. You get the picture ;)

Mornings have been rather interesting as well. Who knew a two year old boy had such an opinion about what he will wear each day?!

So life has been a little challenging here, but all in all most days he's cracking us up and putting the biggest smiles on our face. We love him dearly, no matter what stage we're in!

Sunday Snow Fun!

After church today, Scott decided to clean up the dusting of snow we got last night. His handy little helper, Parker, had more fun than actually helping. Perks of being only two, you can still get away with skimping out on the work ;)