Friday, May 27, 2011

baby #3 - the house

now that we have the birthing of the children out of the way, we're onto our 3rd baby - our new house.
we started thinking about building when we were in colorado, before we were even married. we've been considering builders in WI since we moved here. i started agressively pursuing getting this house built as soon as we had an accepted offer. here we are, about 6 months later, and we finally have a hole in the ground. the funny thing is, it should only take about 3 to 3.5 months to actually build the house.
they broke ground on wednesday unexpectedly. apparently the excavator had to delay a different project because of the rain and so we got bumped up. good news! then today i got a phone call that our foundation pouring will be delayed because of questionable soil conditions. bad news. unfortunately, the soil condition is the only thing that we don't have covered in our contract - any additional costs are ours. the only redeeming news is that the excavator didn't see a problem and we're hopeful the engineer will tell us the same. of course, not until we pay him $500 to do so.
i also found out today that one of our neighbors is ticked about us building a 2 story and told the builder they were trying to stop us. the lot was originally slated to be a 1 story lot and we had to have the subdivision requirements amended to build a 2 story. the neighbor that disagrees is from across the street - not part of the subdivision. she said the lot was zoned for 1 story. unfortunately for her, zoning doesn't specify an amount of stories, it just lays out a maximum height, which we are less than. so she's full of bologna. can't wait to trick or treat at her house. welcome to the neighborhood....
so now we wait. the engineer is coming this weekend and hopefully he'll say we're fine and we'll have a foundation and be back on track next week. but then again, who am i kidding, that's not how we roll! :)

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Welcome Ellen!




Ellen Avenarius McFarlane joined our family on May 2nd at 7:57am, exactly as planned. she weighed in at 7lbs, 6oz and was 20in long. now she's pushing 8lbs and was 21in at her last appointment!

the birth day went beautifully. the night before we dropped ryan off with auntie erin and i said a very tearful goodbye. michael and i spent the evening going out for sushi and watching the town. oh yeah, and giving molly's ear a bath cause she was stinky. :) michael barely slept and i did surprisingly well.

we were up and at'em very early on the 2nd. we hung out in triage for awhile, which felt like forever. at 7:30 on the dot, the nurses came to get me. i walked down the hall by myself and into the operating room. a far cry from my very quick trip down the hall in a hospital bed with ryan. it's amazing what a little anticipation can do for a situation. i had about 10 minutes to freak out about ryan coming, i had 39 weeks with ellen. i must have looked scared out of my mind!

the doctor placed the spinal and we were good to go. i had a bout of nausea early on, so the doc gave me a 2nd anti-nausea medicine, which made me feel loopy. it wasn't long before ellen joined our family. she made 2 squaks and that was it. michael joined her as she was cleaned up and finally brought her over. beautiful. there are no words to describe those first few moments.

unfortunately, the rest of the surgery was a bit sucky for me. i was shaky and loopy and couldn't keep my eyes open. not too many people can say they fell asleep during their c-section! recovery was a bit hazy as well. shaking a ton, falling asleep. they gave me demerol, which also made me sleepy. finally i got to the point where i could keep it together and i got to hold my peanut. she latched immediately and we haven't looked back since. :)

recovery was awesome. my pain never went above a 3 and we got out after 2 nights.

the moment ryan met ellen was everything i hoped for. unfortunately, the respitory therapist decided that was the moment she wanted to teach me to use the funny blowing machine, so i missed quite a bit of it. thank goodness for stephanie, our photographer - she caught everything on film. our photographs from those first few hours are priceless.

that's enough for now. i'm going to go back to snuggling my baby girl. i'm trying to take in every moment and remember every noise, every smell, everything. this time i know how quickly everything changes.

here's our preview video from the photoshoot - http://animoto.com/play/t1iW79mAgacexkyxxhsZ2Q?utm_content=main_link