Frozen Hot CHocolate!

If you are in part of the country that's having this ridiculous heat wave (is there anywhere that Isn't ?) you should definitely try this. 

On our 4th day of OVER 100 degree temps (104 to be exact) my friend texted me saying I absolutely had to try frozen hot chocolate. She texted me the ingredients and luckily we had everything here! 

She's like me and doesn't cook using an exact recipe, just throws ingredients in, but doing it this way it turned out amazing. 

 You need butter, chocolate chips ( i used semi sweet AND white chocolate because DUH!) sugar, hot chocolate, hot chocolate, evaporated milk, and ice

 In a double boiler, melt butter, sugar and hot chocolate mix

 Next add in chocolate chips

 Once that looks like this, add about 1/2 the can of evaporated milk

Mix well- than take off eat and let it get to room temperature. Don't be tempted to skip this step or it will be too thin of a consistency.

Once it's sat at room temp for a little while ( we waited about 45 min. total) you throw it in the blender, add some ice and the rest of the evaporated milk- blend and ENJOY

Cloth Diapers. Part 2.

Okay so washing cloth diapers. It's what everyone asks about and what everyone thinks must be hard. 

I don't mind doing laundry. It's a daily thing for me and I don't see that going away, ever. So throwing in an extra load of laundry every 3-4 days is NO BIG DEAL here. At least not yet anyway! Also it forces me to stay on top of other laundry! Win win!

So our routine when it comes to diapers.

I keep them on the second shelf of our changing table. The changing table is currently in our 'office' area. Which is an area in between the kitchen and living room. It just seems the simplest for newborn diaper changes, but soon this will go in her bedroom (which she isn't sleeping in yet.)

So for changes I just take off an old diaper and leave it on the changing table till I can get to it after I set her down. After she has a new diaper on and set down somewhere I throw the diaper into the pail we have sitting next to changing table. If its just a wet diaper (80% of the time) I just pull out the insert and toss it all in. If it's a dirty diaper I go rinse it off first, but this is not necessary for breast fed babies- I just do it anyway. Wash hands and diaper change is done. Really doesn't take any longer than when we were using disposables. 

I have yet to notice any smell coming from the pail. And trust me- I find this ODD. When using disposables I can smell it in the trash can from a room away. I would usually put the disposable diaper in an extra plastic bag (the waste makes me CRINGE!) just to help with the smell.

After 2 days usually, but can be 3, I just take the whole pail downstairs and throw it in the washer. Here's the odd thing (in my opinion) as soon as the water hits the dirty diapers- it starts to smell badly. Again, I have NO idea why this is. But obviously this doesn't bother me since all I do is close the washer 

To wash diapers I simply:

Toss diapers in washer with settings on large, cold and do a rinse

Next add  the full amount of detergent (I use tide)  that is supposed to be used and do a cycle on cold 

Next I do a wash on cold without detergent or just an extra rinse cycle. Thats it!

If I'm good about running down to start the washer, this process takes about an hour and a half. 

Then I take the inserts and toss them in the dryer and take the diapers outside.Sometimes I do the inserts outside as well. Outside they take about an hour to dry. Then I bring them in and stuff them (add the insert since I use pocket diapers) at night while watching TV.

So far I haven't noticed any stains, but I've been told to throw them in the sun if that happens. And since we live in Denver with over 300 days a year of sun, that will be our solution when that happens. Probably once solids are introduced! 

So that's it. Super duper simple! 

Fire!

I'm sure by now you guys have probably heard  about all the forest fires happening in Colorado right now. Or maybe not? Maybe it's not as big of a deal anywhere else, but here it's all anyone is talking about. All I have to do is look out my window towards the mountains and see hazy smoke coming up over them. Some days I can smell it- and we are in Denver, so pretty far away!

When we were driving back from iowa a couple of weeks ago we were about 30 min outside of Denver and thought the car smelled funny, rolled down the window and smelled smoke! We had a moment of panic before we realized it was the forest fires making their way closer and not our car on fire. 

Anyway, on Saturday we made our way up to Estes Park for the yearly Midsummer festival. I grew up in Sweden celebrating Midsummer every year and was thrilled when I discovered a few years ago that Estes Park celebrates it every year! 

Out of the past 5 summer we have been three times, the other two times we were in Sweden celebrating the real deal!

We headed up there early because I refuse to miss the opening ceremonies- seeing the Swedish flag raised while hearing the national anthem always gives me goose bumps.  This is always followed by the dancing around the flower decorated pole. 

Around 12 we were dancing around the pole (Not to be confused with pole dancing) when Drew noticed smoke clouds just west of us. We were watching it for a few minutes and the smoke got darker, bigger and looked like it was coming closer. Every 5 minutes fire trucks would rush past us, sirens blaring. 

We had planned on going to the lake and letting Jasper splash around for a few minutes, but we decided to get out of there. There's really only one way down the mountain from there, and one lane and we didn't want to get stuck in some mad rush to get out of there should the fire get closer. 

So glad we made that decision. On our way down the mountain we passed probably ten firetrucks trying to get up to Estes from nearby towns, they needed all the help they could get. 

After we got home and turned on the news we started hearing just how bad it got up there! We were right, it Was a new fire and it Was super close to where we were. Just a couple of miles. And it was windy. Luckily the fire got contained pretty quickly, but twenty something homes were lost. So incredibly sad. 

 Picture I took while jasper was dancing. Notice the smoke cloud right behind?

As we were leaving.


And here's a pictures from the news website just 30 min after we left tops.

The last few weeks has been out of control hot (103-105) every day and it's absolutely unbearable.We are in desperate need of some rain and cooler temperature here as our state is literally on fire so send prayers! 

Tindra's Birth part four.

A little after 2 PM, about 4 hours after getting to the hospital, we were moved to 'our room' for the next 3 days. The move there was horrible. I wasn't as numb anymore, and every little pump felt like my insides were going to fall out. When they (3-4 nurses) picked me up off the bed to move me to my bed I thought for sure they had jostled some organs around. 

Around this time I started to get super itchy. Something nobody warned me about. It felt like little ants were crawling all over my arms and face. Apparently a side effect of the medicine used during delivery wearing off. I kept taking my oxygen mask thing off (and being yelled at nurses because of it) but my nose just itched so badly I couldn't stand it. They gave me some benadryl and that almost instantly made the itching stop, but it also made me super drowsy for a while. I remember nurses asking me questions and I tried to answer, but I just couldn't form words. I was answering in my head though! And at first I honestly thought I was saying my thoughts out loud, and was super confused when they weren't acknowledging my answers. 

The 45 min I dozed here was pretty much the only sleep I got the first 24 hours.

After we attempted breast feeding again (extremely painful with a c-section because sitting up is almost impossible in the beginning) they took her for half an hour for a bath, which Drew got to go with for. 

After her bath Jasper showed up to meet her for the first time! He was SO so excited. She was 6 hrs old by then.

 Mamma on morphine is Not a good look... 

After Jasper left I started bugging the nurses about eating. I was Starving at this point since I hadn't eaten since dinner the night before. My 'dinner' arrived. Which was clear chicken broth. I kid you not. I was supposed to be on a clear liquid diet for at least 24 hours.

I downed that chicken broth, and the nurse was nice and bought me a pack of saltines. As in two crackers. Luckily for me Drew saw where she got them, and he smuggled a handful more in for me to munch on. 

Next: Our first night in the hospital and why I couldn't get even a minute worth of sleep. 

TWO MONTHS

I can't believe you are two months already. I'm probably going to say that every month!

At 2 months you

Are mostly sleeping through the night! You go to sleep around 9:30 and eat between 4:30-5:30

naps are all over the place,some days you take 3 2 hr naps, other days just 45 min. cat naps all day.

Still every 2.5-3 hrs. We are working on eating every 3 hrs. You eat about 45 min at a time, sometimes a little less.

You smile ALL THE TIME now- the easiest way to get you to smile, is just to smile at you. You always return the smile. Makes my heart so happy.

Love love to be held and snuggled by mamma

You still want to 'power eat' between 5-8. 

I think you are still taking about 5 oz every time you eat- at least you do when you get your nightly bottle!

You are always SO alert when awake, staring everywhere, you want to see everything!

STATS
Length: 22 3/4  70th%
Weight 9 lbs 15 oz 21%
Head circumference 15 1/4 72%
So basically a tall, skinny baby with a big head. Sooorta like someone else we know, your big brother :)

You did amazing with your 2 month shots- just cried for about 30 seconds but it was still heart breaking to see.

We decided to go with 2 shots instead of 4 at once so we will have to go back in a few weeks for the other two.

Jasper had to get his stitches out today and also did Super amazing. It was still a little open (doc said it must have been a super deep cut) and she ended up having to use skin glue on it as well.

I think today was harder for ME than for my babies, seeing them in even a fraction amount of pain is heartbreaking.


Two month photo shoots! 

So you wanna talk boobs?

Warning: I will use the words breasts, boobs, nipples etc. in this post so look away if that bothers you! 

I've gotten a lot of questions in 'real life' and a couple of emails asking how breast feeding is going, most of these questions came from people knowing how hard of a time I had last time around. 

I had a milk supply issue with Jasper, but it was finally to a point where it was going okay, not good, but getting better and then I went in for my 6 week check up and the OB convinced me to get the birth control shot. Within a few days my milk was basically non existent and within a week or so it was completely gonezo. 

This time around I was even more determined to make it work. I knew from my supply issues last time that I needed to be proactive about those issues before I had them. So by talking to the AMAZING lactation consultants at Rose, we decided the best thing to do would be to nurse, and then pump right after. I started this the day after my c-section. 

The first days (and weeks) were HARD. I couldn't even sit up unassisted- so to nurse I would need the help of Drew and usually a nurse or LC to help prop me up. I needed about 7 pillows to help me hold up  T. I was in so much pain I couldn't even hold my daughter unassisted. But after a couple of days it did get easier. 

Pumping after every feeding sucked to be honest. From start to finish, nursing her and than pumping took about an hour and 15 minutes. Than the entire process would be repeated at the MOST 2 hrs later, usually less. But I'm still so glad I did it because I have had no milk supply issues this time around.

After 8-9 days I stopped pumping after each feeding and went to just pumping once in the morning and once right before I go to bed. At this point it's probably not necessary anymore, but I give a bottle of pumped milk in the middle of the night and the rest I put in the deep freeze we just bought 6 weeks ago. So far I have between 700-800 oz stored in the freezer! I get a weird satisfaction every time I go to put a bag full of 8 oz bags in the deep freezer. I love knowing that if I have to quit nursing next week or next month or whenever, I will still have a decent supply of milk for her. 

Over the last 8.5  weeks I've encountered some breast feeding problems. From overactive let down to mastitis (twice)  latch problems and cracked, bloody nipples and I'm sure other issues that I can't even come up with now, but I'm proud to say I (we) have fought through them and are going strong now. 

Obviously everyone can agree that 'breast is best'. But what I want people to know who are uncertain about breast feeding, is that it doesnt HAVE to be all or nothing. You don't have to breast feed around the clock to give your child what he/she needs. T gets one bottle (occasionally 2) bottles of half formula half pumped breast milk a day. We had to start this in the hospital, giving a tiny bit of formula to supplement, and I'm okay with continuing it. It works for her, it works for me, it works for us. 

I had an original goal of making it 6 weeks of breast feeding. Than the goal changed a few weeks ago to three months, and now it's 6 months, or maybe even longer? I know that if I was so intent on making sure she never got a drop of formula, that it would be even harder than it is, and I'd be more likely to have given up by now. But by allowing her to have a bottle in the middle of the night (she nurses 45 min at least and a bottle cuts that time in HALF) by giving my very sore nipples a break at night I get the strength and energy to nurse her all day and evenings. I'm completely okay with her getting 2 oz of formula a day- she still gets 90% of breast milk. 

So if you are considering breast feeding, but don't know if you CAN do it, or can do it 100%, it's okay to just do what you can. I look at it the way I look at feeding Jasper. We buy organic food. Mostly. Maybe 75%. But that doesn't mean I'm never going to let him have potato chips, or cake, or any other processed crap. He will get that. I just want the majority of his food to be whole, healthy, organic foods. So that's what I'm giving to Tindra as well. 

Before and After

6 Months Pregnant

2 Months after birth

Same shirt different belly

We had fun plans for Father's day. We were going to go to Pirates Cove, an awesome water park just 20 minutes away. But right as we were getting ready to leave our friends house after a pool/grill out (literally my hand was on the door and T was in her car seat) when I hear a thud and Jasper's screams like I've never before heard them.

Him and our friends daughter R had been playing on the couch and he jumped off the couch and somehow landed right on his chin, busting it open. Blood was gushing and I knew right away we would need to make an ER trip. We got it cleaned up and the bleeding stopped within a few minutes but could tell it still probably needed looked at.

3.5 hrs in the ER, FIVE stitches, a popsicle for J and juice for his dad who almost fainted and we were on our way. I'm certain I aged about 5 years from the experience, but Jasper was so So brave. I was a very proud mamma- he did amazing. 

So no waterpark Sunday but we did have a good day anyway. J let us all sleep in till 9, than we got the dad in our life coffee and did a little shopping and BBQ for lunch. I'm not a fan of BBQ type food (well mainly the meat) so we rarely go but since it was HIS day I could of course suffer through ribs, or the sides rather. 

After nap we headed to see Madagascar 3- it was a super cute movie. As I was nursing T in the dark movie theater (yay for finally being brave enough for public nursing!) I thought about Jasper's first time at the movies. Seeing Harry Potter (his favorite) when he was 3 and a half. And here T was at her first movie at 8 weeks old! Things are certainly different for kiddo number 2!

Hope you guys all had a wonderful weekend!

Tindra's Birth part three

Part one and part two

So I left off with not being able to breathe. The anastesiaologist must have seen that I was having a hard time breathing even before I was able to say anything because he immediately asked if I was having trouble breathe- I nodded and he messed with some dials or something and within a minute or two I was back to breathing normally. I still was having a hard time talking though. Not sure if it was the meds, the oxygen or just being so overwhelmed. But Drew and the nurses working on her seemed to know what to say without me having to ask and kept shouting updates across the room.

'She's doing perfect!'

'She's 7 lbs 1 oz'

'We will bring over over in just a minute!'

'Just wrapping her up now'

'Here she comes mom!'

Literally answering all my unasked questions before I could find a way to ask them.

I'm not sure how long she was over there, maybe 5 minutes? I know the anastesialogist was attempting to keep my mind occupied with small talk. He was keeping me updated what was going on on the other side of the sheet- and at one point told me how flat my belly was and that I would be ready for swim suit season in weeks. HA. I do remember believing him though and being severely dissapointed when I finally saw my stomach and it's lack of flatness.

Finally Drew brought Tindra over. Apparently someone one of the nurses had grabbed our camera during this (and part of the deliver as well, I did NOT need to see those pictures blown up on my laptop when I got home) and got some pictures which I'm grateful for.

Drew got to stand there showing me baby T while I was continuing to be stitched up. I have no idea how long this was, maybe another 10 minutes? After this we all headed into the recovery room (right next door) together, where we stayed for the next two hours.

I'm not sure exactly why were there for so long, but I think it has to do with if something were to go wrong with me they could rush me right next door back into surgery.

In the recovery room it was me, Drew, the nurse who had been with me from the start and a peds nurse. She was fantastic. I was still completely numb during this part and she had Tindra latched and nursing by 12,less than an hour after she was born.

I didn't know how much bonding we would get to do from the beginning with having a c-section, but it was more so than with Jasper even because he was taken away from me for an hour and a half or so after he was born and she was by my side pretty much the entire time.

 That's my F@CK that hurts face

Looking at these pictures I can't believe how FAT my face/neck looks! I'll be the first to admit my neck always has extra fat, but these is even more than usual! I think (just a guess?) that it has to do with the 4 IV bags they pumped me full of fluid. I guess I was extremely dehydrated when I got in- not really sure how that happened, but they put in 3 IV's full with in the first few hours and than another one at night. Yikes!

As you can probably tell I'm not only sharing pictures where I look good. I'm trying to portray honestly my days there and if I were to only show a picture where I look GOOD, there would be no pictures of myself. 


Next up, when we get to our room for the next few days.

Cloth diapers. Part 1.

We are doing it and LOVE them so far. I am by no means any sort of expert, we have only been doing them for about 3 weeks but I can't even imagine going back to disposables now. The day we were packing for the road trip I put T in disposables for a few hrs because I wanted to wash all the diapers at once to bring with on our three day trip. When I picked her up after napping in one I was shocked/disgusted by the smell. Seriously. I never noticed the smell of disposables when Jasper was in them for 27 months or when Tindra used them for the first month of her life, but after 3 weeks of cloth I can't stand the smell of disposables which is ironic. For one I could smell the pee and it's not like she had been sitting in a wet diaper, she had this diaper on for Maybe 3 hrs, but I could smell the pee. And the chemicals! I can't describe the smell, just that it smelled 'chemically'. And that is Not a smell I want on my newborns tiny tush.

When Drew came home and picked her up for some snuggles he scrunched his face and asked why she smelled weird. Ha!

Anyway, we won't be going back to disposables anytime soon! 

So what diapers do we have? So far we have 7 fuzzi bunz one size, 6 bum genious one size, 2 grovia's, 7 Oh Katy's, 2 itti bitti tutto's and a couple random ones. Plus a bunch of extra inserts. 

I was most excited about grovia's and itti bitti tutto's before starting because of everything I read about them. But so far they just dont work. I've tried each a few times, and each time they leak within 30 min. I don't know if maybe they just don't fit her right yet, so I will continue to try because I really really WANT to like them! 

Out of the other three, I have had zero problems or leaks. She even stays in cloth with an extra insert all night! If I had to pick one, at this point I would probably pick bum genious. I love fuzzi bunz as well, and the only reason why BG's get like a fraction point higher then FB is because they are easier to stuff because they are slightly wider. Otherwise I have equal love for them both. 

For now I have plenty of diapers (even not using the ones I dislike) for 2-3 days at a time. 

The Only negative I have with cloth diapering (trying to be completely honest here!) is how bulky they are. But I knew that going in. With dresses it's a non issue, but with pants, it can be a bit of a problem. Good thing 90% of her wardrobe is made up of dresses! 

Next I'll talk about our wash routine. It's more simple than I would have thought possible!

I'm starting to understand how buying cloth diapers can become an obsession. I'm already researching new diapers to try even though we don't need anymore! What are your favorite cloth diapers? Any I absolutely must try? 

Road trip

Ten hour road trip, 1 way (turned into about 11.5 hr road trip) with a 4 year old and 7 week old. No we aren't crazy, I promise. Our patience was tested several times, but all in all the trip went great. Jasper has always been an amazing traveler (that's what happens when you live 700 miles away from your closest family) and now Tindra needs to become a great traveler as well because we still live 700 miles away from our closets family members. 

She did great on her maiden voyage across the midwest. We didn't leave till almost 10 at night since Drew didn't get off till after 8 and we still had to pack up the car. She slept Great most of the way. She ate a little when we stopped for gas around 2AM and ate and stretched in Omaha at 6. That was a long stop. Between feeding her, spilling hot starbucks all over the front seat and a screwed up breakfast order you could say our patience was very thin. But once we had food in our stomachs, and coffee was cleaned up we were good to go. 

Our trip back went just as smoothly. We didn't leave till about 2:30 on Sunday and stopped in Lincoln ( 3 hrs from our start) to visit Drew's grandparents for a couple of hrs. We didn't get home till 3:30 in the morning- and get this, I stayed away with Drew the WHOLE time. I don't usually. I'm a bad co-pilot. And he always drives at night (my night vision isn't the best) and does really well with it, but we were both exhausted after not getting to my moms till 3 AM after a wedding Sat. night so I thought Id stay up with him for a while, and it ended up being all night. We just got to talking, reminiscing about the past, talking about the future, and all of a sudden we were taking our exit off of I25 and pulling up to our bungalow. 

The trip was short but great. It was good to see family, and a few friends and show off Baby T to everyone. We will be heading back again in a few weeks for my brothers wedding and I'm Really looking forward to that trip because it will be about 2 weeks- much more relaxing! I always try to jam way too much into a trip back because I want to see everybody! 

 Tindra fell in LOVE with the hammock out at my mom's

 Meeting cousin Linnea for the first time! They are just 5 months a part and will soon be joined by my sister's baby boy! 

 Cousin dance party was totally happening. Linnea's big sister. 

 This was my favorite tree to read in growing up. So fun to see Jasper enjoy this tree as much as I used to

I love city living, but it's so good to go back home to the Iowa countryside as well. Best of both worlds! 

As you can see we did cloth diapers during the trip! I'll post more about that soon. 

Look alikes?

Every one else has been saying how much Jasper and Tindra look like, but until recently  I didn't really see it. But a picture taken the other night reminded me of Jasper. What do you think, think they look alike?

Jasper was 2 weeks old in this picture

And here's Tindra at 6.5 weeks in Jasper's old robe. 

I'm thinking they definitely have some similarities!!

What's kind of funny (we were talking about this last night) is that when Jasper was a baby up until about one I'd say about 55-60% of people thought he looked like me, and 45-40% thought Drew.

 With Tindra 99.99% say she looks me and Jasper and only 1 person (my SIL) has said she looks like Drew. So these same people that thought Jasper looked like Drew, think T looks like Jasper but Not Drew. I know that was confusing. ha. 

Regardless of who they look like, I think we make some darn cute babies! 

You guys asked some great questions HERE and I will get to them next week. Tonight we are headed on a 700 mile (one way) road trip back to Iowa for a wedding and to see family and will be back Sunday night.I'm  only slightly nervous about 20+ hrs in the car with two kiddos. Wish us luck!