Sienna and Elli at Home

One of our main concerns with having a second kid is how Elliana would respond. Elli is kind of a strong-willed child who often demands her parent's (mostly her mom's) time. With a new little ball of flesh that divided her parent's attention, we weren't sure how Elli would react.

Fortunately, she has been amazing with Sienna. She loves to hold her, pet her, kiss her, talk and sing to her, and even sometime cuddle with her for a few minutes. It's pretty adorable. Elli is nearing her terrible twos and has begun to push against her boundaries in other ways, but thankfully she has been fantastic with Sienna.

Here are some fun moments we caught between these two sisters:

It's only been a few weeks, but it's amazing how quickly new borns grow. Sienna is already out of premie clothes and into newborn outfits. Her cheeks and her little bum-bum are filling out and she's almost doubled her body weight in 5 weeks. The doctors have been very pleased with her growth.

We've had some wonderful friends help us out as Heather and I have transitioned to having two little ones at home. Many friends have brought over meals, an outfit, or simply stopped by to say hi. We weren't able to get pics with all of them, but we are incredibly grateful for all of their support.

It's been especially nice to have Tys and Diana and their family close by. Elli loves her cousins, and they've enjoyed getting to meet their newest cousin.

Sienna Comes Home!

After three days in the hospital, we brought Sienna home. As when we had Elli, the hospital treated us great: Heather got a massage one day and for our final meal, they brought in a table, laid out a nice table cloth, and gave a nice dinner to both Heather and me. But even still, we were ready to come home.

Since then, though, we've been a little behind on everything, including blog posts. For those who have had new borns, you probably understand ... for the first week or so, Heather and I both felt like zombies. And even now, Heather still doesn't get a lot of sleep each night. We were especially grateful to have Heather's mom Christine staying with us. Each morning, she would get up with Elli and watch her while Heather and I tried to recover from the lack of sleep the night before. On top of that, Christine kept us both fed and our fridge full. She was wonderful!

Okay, so back to Sienna coming home; here are some pics we took right before coming home. Isn't she so tiny and adorable! In the last few pics, you can tell that she barely fits into her car seat.

Utah visit to see Kyle and Jamie and fam

This post is a flashback post to cover a great trip we took back in January. Since we've moved to VA, we've wanted to go back to UT to visit Kyle, Jamie, and their kids. We thought it would be perfect to visit in the winter so that we could also take advantage of the mountains to go skiing. Great plan, right? It was, right up until it decided not to snow at all this winter! In fact, I think Mother Nature was purposefully toying with us: the last day we were there, it started snowing. And within four days after we left, it had snowed two more times.

But even though we didn't go skiing, we had a blast. And it actually worked out better because we were able to spend more time together having a good time. And Elliana loved being around her cousins.

Here are some pics we took while we were there.

On one of the days, we went to an indoor gymnasium playground place. It was a lot of fun, for both adults and kids. Too bad they don't have things like this out east.

We couldn't get enough of playgrounds. On a separate day, we went to a McDonald's or Wendy's and played inside their tube playground for a while. Fortunately, I was the only adult who got to play with the kids. Normally, this would've been fun for me, but now that I'm 6'1", my knees take a beating inside of these little kid-size tubes. Oh well, it was still fun to play with Elli and the other kids, too.

We were also blessed to have to chance to see my Grandpa Hart for one afternoon. This was his first time meeting Elli.

Meet Sienna Christine

As avid readers of our blog will know, we've been expecting a recent addition to our family. After months of pregnancy (which we kept out the "public eye" of our blog so as to avoid the paparazzi), Heather gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby girl on 16 February 2012 at 9:10pm. We named her Sienna Christine, and we couldn't be happier.

Here is some of the behind the scenes story of her coming into this world. At the start of week 33 of pregnancy, the protein level in Heather's urine spiked, causing our doctors to increase Heather's appointments to three times a week with two 24 hour urine samples. They essentially told us that they could decide to induce labor at any moment since preeclampsia was becoming a high risk. So Heather and I scrambled to get the absolute essentials ready around the house to welcome the new baby, Heather got a couple of steroid shots to promote Sienna's growth, and then we waited. Thankfully, Sienna gave us almost 3 more weeks to prep and get ready. On 15 Feb, Heather's OB/GYN had her go to the hospital all day for monitoring, and then that night he decided that the 16th was going to be the day.

At 9am on the 16th, Heather was started on pitocin and her water was broken. Unfortunately, even though she had contractions on and off all day, she was not far enough along by night and so at 8pm, Dr. Tudder advised that it was time to move to a c-section. We were not thrilled to hear that, but by then we knew it was best for both mom and baby; Heather's blood pressure had been very high all day and that was not healthy for anyone.

So we got all suited up and at 9:10pm, Sienna emerged into the world at 5 lbs 4 oz 19 inches long with a full head of golden brown hair. She was beautiful.

On a slightly morbid note, the surgeons allowed me to watch the whole surgery, which I found fascinating. I had to reassure them that I could handle it because a nurse told me that they rarely allow the husband to watch. But I found the whole process really interesting. I think I would go be a doctor if I had to redo my career.

Heather handled the decision to have the c-section and the surgery like a champ. Of course, she was in quite a bit of pain afterward, and she had to have a magnesium-sulfate IV drip like the last time to prevent seizures, which caused nausea, jitteriness, light-headedness, and general achiness all over. A nurse summed it up as it's like being hit by a mack truck. Not fun. But after a lot of resting on the 17th, she was even able to get up and move (barely) that evening and today (the 18th), she is looking and moving and feeling much better. But full recovery will still take time.

Meanwhile, about Sienna, the hospital policy is that all newborns born before 36 weeks must stay at least one night in the NICU. Sienna was born at week 35 day 6, so she was taken to the NICU after only a very brief time in the OR (Heather only got about 10 minutes with her). Sienna did great in the NICU, though, eating like a pro. By early the next morning, Sienna was discharged to the regular nursery. We definitely feel that Heavenly Father blessed us tremendously that Sienna was so healthy. Thank you to everyone for your prayers.

On the evening of the 17th, we brought Elliana to the hospital to meet her new little sister. Elli's reactions were a bit mixed. Her first reaction was excitedly asking to hold her. Then, with Sienna in her arms, she started to get upset and cry. Then she became confused and didn't quite know what to make of her. After a few minutes, we placed Sienna back in the hospital crib alongside Heather's bed. Elli had brought a yellow duck doll-like thing that one of our good friends/neighbor had given to Elli so that she could give it to Sienna. When Sienna was in the crib, Elli grabbed the duck, leaned over the crib, and started making duck noises in an effort to play with her little sister. "Kack, kack, kack!" (That's Elli's interpretation of a duck.) It was adorable. We recorded it on video, but haven't been able to figure out yet how to get those videos onto our blog. But here are the pictures.

Heather's mom, Christine, arrived on Friday night, and we are grateful that she is here again. She is a wonderful emotional and physical support.

Elli visited Sienna again this morning. She still showed a range of emotions, but we were happy to note that being upset was not one of them. Obviously, having another child in the house will be a big and lengthy transition for Elli, but we think she's going to do great and love being a big sister.

Choosing the Name:

Several people have been asking us what Sienna's name is. It's Sienna. : ) Coming to that decision, though, was a bit more of a process than it was last time.

1. In the run-up to going to the hospital, we were considering four names: Sienna, Sophi, Maya, and Myla.

2. By the time we entered the hospital, we were down to two names: Sophi and Maya.

3. After entering the hospital, we did not feel good about either of those two names. So we checked out lots of online resources and used a huge genealogy chart of Heather's family going back 5-6 generations that her Grandmother Betty had put together for inspiration. After Sienna was born, we had narrowed it back down to essentially two names: Sienna, Sadie.

4. Then, we had picked Sadie. We tried it out for about half a day, but neither Heather nor I felt that it was the right name for her.

5. So we tried out two other names all day today (the 18th): Sienna, Cora.

6. At 11:30pm tonight, we decided on Sienna. It just felt right. And that is how we picked Sienna's name. I'm sure Disney will make a movie about this epic tale.

Okay, time to get a few bits of sleep tonight. But first, we wanted to thank all of our family and friends for their prayers and help. We feel tremendously blessed that so many friends helped out with Elli while we were spending so much time at the hospital before Christine arrived, and that both Heather and Sienna have been healthy. We can't wait for people to meet Sienna in person!

P.S. We're moving to Taiwan this summer!

We're pregnant! It's a girl. And she should be born today.