5 minutes...

...that's what I have, if I'm lucky.

We don't have a bath tub here, so this morning I put the baby bath in the shower and Maria had the time of her life!!

Two is More Than One.

That being said.... my blogging is going to be the thing in my life that suffers.

I can hardly find the time to sit at a computer, let alone have my hands free to type up a blog post.

Things will get easier... I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed right now.


We are all feeling better (thank heaven!).
Maria is back to her normal happy self. She's turning into quite a chatty little girl. She will go sit in front of a mirror, lay on the floor, wiggle around and talk to her buddy in the mirror... the little drama queen cracks me up!
Cooper is also feeling much better. He's starting to wake up more. We went to the doctor today and he was up to 7 lbs 6 oz. which is up, but he is still not back up to birth weight. The doctor is a little concerned, but because he's just gotten over his cold we're thinking that is the reason that he hasn't gained much weight.
Now, because Cooper has been sick and not gaining weight I've been holding him and letting him eat pretty much whenever he wants to... but Maria misses being the baby and being held and cuddled whenever she wants to. And carrying a newborn and a toddler at the same time isn't exactly easy.


... and since there haven't been many pictures of Cooper... here are a couple from after his bath the other day. He doesn't like baths much yet, but he sure does like the cuddles afterwords.

Cooper : 2 Weeks

Cooper had his two week check up this morning.
He's ok.
He's got this nasty cough... he sounds like he's an old man. It's just heartbreaking to hear my little fella cough like that. His lungs sound OK though... we just need to watch his breathing and if he has any difficulty breathing then the doctor wants to see him ASAP.
He's also got a plugged tear duct. Massage that with a warm cloth, but if the eye starts getting red then it's probably infected.
He's not back up to birth weight either (which just in case you didn't know they like newborns to be back up to their birth weight by 2 weeks). He was 7lbs 9oz at birth and right now he is at 7lbs 2oz. We think it's because he's sick... we'll go back in next Monday and hopefully he'll be back up by then. He's dropped from 25% for weight down to 10%.

Cooper is a dear sweet baby. He's pretty content all the time. We're working on figuring out the whole day vs. night thing. He's been doing better the past few nights.
Maria is feeling MUCH better and is pretty much back to her old self. She's eating more and definitely happier. She's started giving Cooper kisses on his forehead and likes to hold his hand while we're driving.

Tulip Festival

Yesterday was beautiful.
Days that we long for in the Pacific Northwest.

Here's a secret...

I'm kind of a pansy when it comes to going outside when it's cold.
I don't like being cold.... or wet (which happens a lot here).

So yesterday it got up into the upper 60's and we just had to take advantage of it.
(stock up on our vitamin D)

In the afternoon (it took ALL morning to prepare to leave the house) we headed down to the Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon.



We headed over to Roosensomething gardens. It was beautiful.

We got our first family picture:



and one of my lovely parents:



a bunch of Maria... she was so cute with all the flowers. She "smelled" them.





I love the look on her face in this one:





I'm not sure which was her favorite.... the flowers or the alpacas.



Here's one of daddy with the baby...



and a rare picture of me!



We set Cooper down in a patch of tulips...



We bought some delicious fudge... Maria enjoyed it so much that we ended up having to hide it from her and then play the distraction game... as it was she ended up running around laughing like a crazy lady.



It was a super fun day. I'm excited for this summer when the sun will be out more and we can get more vitamin D.

One Week.

We are sick,
and it is really no fun at all.

really ridiculously runny noses...
nasty, chest- rattling coughs...
the occasional fever...
lost sense of smell...
foggy hearing...
oh, and did I mention runny noses and a bad cough?

On the 5th we took Maria in to get a chest x-ray because her cough was so bad, she doesn't have pneumonia.

I was hoping that this was all going to be over with by the time Cooper got here.

But it isn't gone yet... and he started coughing yesterday...
it makes all my mommy bones sick to hear him cough.

and to add to the pile, Maria has 3 more teeth coming in right now, perfect timing, hu?

Sleep is a rare commodity around here.

And because Maria feels so crappy she's having a hard time adjusting to having Cooper around. She's split probably 50/50 as to liking him or not. She's used to having me at her beck & call... but its darn near impossible to nurse one baby and play with the other at the same time.

Maria enjoys pointing out Cooper's body parts.... although we do try to keep her away from his head. She's really good with knee's and feet.
I'm excited for when we're all feeling better and can all interact more normally.

Because we have been so miserable we have not ventured out much this past week. We went to the pharmacy a few times, and to the grocery store.... but we've mostly just been hanging out at home.
With the exception of Sunday morning... we took a little field trip over to Sandy Point... We had a bad case of cabin fever and NEEDED to get out.



It was a beautiful morning... it was warm, and there wasn't much of a breeze.

Maria tried throwing rocks in the water....



and although she enjoyed herself tremendously she never threw them quite far enough to actually hit the water. So she got Daddy to help her.



She went for "walks" on the driftwood,



and decided to bury herself in a hole that she found.



And there were lots of times where she didn't want to walk so she cuddled with Daddy.



In the meantime I was taking pictures with this little sweetheart strapped to my chest.



He is such a special little boy. I'm SO incredibly glad that he's joined our family.

Baby x

here i am, sitting in a hospital bed. marco cooper tobias munoz (formerly known as baby "x" or "Quak" to my parents) made his entrance into the world in the wee hours of the morning, 1:06 am. He weighed in at a whopping 7lbs 9 oz, and is 21 inches long. He is super content just hanging out.

Birth Story

Around 9:30 last night I mentioned to Marco that I was having a little discomfort. It could just be cramps or it could be contractions. He said that I should go tell my mom just in case we had to leave in the middle of the night so that they could watch Maria. I really didn't think it was anything, but I went anyway. I hung out with my parents for about twenty minutes and had three pretty regular "discomforts". So I went downstairs and finished packing my bag..... just in case. I played a couple of rounds of spider solitaire while monitoring my discomfort level, and around 10:30 decided that these were most likely contractions.... ok havin' a baby tonight... or tomorrow.

11:00 - I called the on-call doctor and we determined that contractions 4 1/2 minutes apart lasting for about a minute sounded like I was in labor, so Marco and I loaded up the car and headed to the hospital. They knew who I was when we got there.... although it's been 19 months since I was there. And the nurse was a little worried. She had read my history with Maria knew that things could go fast.

11:30 - At this point I'm doing great... pain level during contractions is about a 5. I can still talk, and I'm smiling so the people at the front desk don't think that I'm really in labor. The Nurse has me go and pee in a cup and change into one of their gowns and then checks me.... I'm dialated too a 6 and 100% effaced. She left the pee in the bathroom and hauled me off to a room to get admitted.

I opted not to get an epidural, because with Maria that didn't work out so well (they were administering the drug as Maria was being born). So we just hung out, chatted it up a bit, went thru contractions, had a shot of some drug, and had some more contractions.

1:00 I'm pretty much in pain and want this over with... so the doctor comes in, checks me and tells me that he can break my water and it will probably be over in 5 minutes.

1:01 doctor breaks my water.... ugh that's painful! Contractions.... screaming.... etc.

1:06 baby is born.

Oma

This is a picture of my Oma (Dad's Mom) with me as a baby.

Today as I was sitting in the doctor's office I thought of her. Of how much I miss her. I don't do that often... think of the dead, or miss them. I think I get too busy with everyday life - dishes, laundry, trying to make sure that Maria gets good stimulation, making sure there is quality time with husband, cleaning the bathroom, making dinner - but today I did... no other thoughts were running through my head. I was thinking of my baby, heaven, and my Oma.

She died in September 1998
I was 16 years old.

She tried to teach me how to quilt. She really wanted to do that with me, but I didn't want to. She asked me repeatedly, I said "no" over and over and over again, until I finally said "when pigs fly". She got the point. I hope I didn't hurt her feelings.

She wanted to get her ears pierced, and asked me to go with her... we never did it.

We had some excellent times together. My cousin Dawn (who is about the same age as me) and I would spend a week or two there at a time. We had a blast. We just never got around to the ear piercing, and I was just not ready for quilting when she was here.

Today I wished that she was still here... that we could be crafty together, that we could go to the temple, that she could tell me more about her life, especially her childhood in Indonesia, that she could play with my babies. I wish that she could have been here when I got married, and when Maria was born.

She is busy in heaven. She wouldn't have it any other way. She is one of those people who had to have 10 things going at one time in order to be satisfied. I hope that she got a chance to get to know Maria (her middle name was Maria) before she came to earth... and that she knows baby "x".

I hope she knows I miss her, and that I'm excited to quilt with her in heaven.