Hereeeeeeee's ........ Ava Kassidy Bankester

Yes, we did finally decide on a name before she made her apperance.

Ava was born on Aug 20, 2009 at 1241 pm. She was 6 lbs 0.5 oz and 19 inches long and healthy. She was letting everyone know that she wasn't happy with all that they were doing to her.

She had APGAR scores of 9 & 9 and no jaundice. She ate a 2 oz bottle in 20 minutes once they brought her to the room. She is a little pig and definitely makes her demands known.

The whole C/S was so totally different from Ian, mostly good, a little bad. They did a spinal and the first attempt hit something and made me jump and put me in tears. Luckily the next try was better. We also discovered that morphine and I don't get along as well as Percocet and I don't get along:) I can not handle high level narcotics. The worst thing about the recovery was the tension headache that I had from Friday, the 21 through Friday the 28th. I swear I wanted my head cut off. Other than that, the recovery was a lot easier than with Ian. I didn't realize how sick I was with Ian until now. The bittersweet part of Ava's birth was that Perry's stepmom's dad died that same day in Pensacola about an hour after she was born. He did know that she had been born and what her name was before he died. So one light went out while another was born.

Ava's already had her 1 week checkup and she had weighed 6 lbs 5 oz. We weighed her last night and she is 6 lbs 13 oz. So seriously, this child loves to eat:)

Ian is being a great big brother. He loves to help and give her kisses and if she cries, he comes running to check on her. We are being patient with the tantrums.

Lil Sis Update #2

Well had my 37 week check today. My BP was high again but no protein spilling and no swelling or sudden weight gain. So I'm just being difficult:)

Well yesterday, I felt off all day and night so I got to thinking that lil sis was coming early like by this weekend. So the Dr comes in and in light of my BP being high the last 2 vists, that we should move the C/S date up. This should help with my BP issues so I don't have to have a hospital stay before she is born or possibly on any meds.

So lil sister is coming TOMORROW, Thursday, Aug, 20. So around lunchtime we should have our newest member of the family. Hopefully she will have a name by then. No we still haven't decided. Apparently we work better with the pressure of the knife:)

I will be at 37 weeks and 5 days with her. That's 10 weeks + 3 days longer than Ian cooked.

So luckily it is tomorrow so that gives time for my mom to get here to watch Ian for us. Unfortunately she will be the only grandparent present. Perry's mom & stepdad are coming tomorrow night for the weekend, my dad is coming on Sat morning, & Perry's dad and stepmom aren't going to be able to make it as his stepmom's family is having some serious health issues and her place is with them. PLEASE keep her family in your prayers. It could be a rough weekend for her.

We will send them plenty of pics and calls over the next couple of days so that they don't geel left out. She was looking forward to being here for the birth. As all of the grandparents missed it last time as well.

Oh well, time to go. I still have to get pretty feet tonight and need to run laundry so it's caught up:) Oh well no rest for the weary:)

Kids Room Pics

Finally have all the little things done in the kids' room. Thought I'd share how we have Cars + Flowers in the same room. We only have 2 bedrooms so for now they will have to share. So it was an adventure trying to figure out how to make it girly and boy at the same time. Hopefully this will work. Plus on the brightside her side will be easy to change once her interests are discovered.

Lil Sis Update

Well it's time for Ian's little sister to have an update as well.

We have officially made it to "full-term" at 37 weeks. That's 10 weeks longer than Ian. It has been very weird. I'm not used to being this pregnant and feeling like a little old lady with all the achy joints and I swear if I hit my belly on one more thing, I'm going to scream:)

Had a little scare last week, my BP had been wonky at home since the beach trip. At the Dr it was still a little high but not super high, just higher than it had been being. So we ended up with doing the Pre-E bloodwork again and then had to come back for a BP check 2 days later.

Bloodwork was good, so platelets and liver enzymes were good and BP had gone down from what it was but still seemed a little high to me. I was just told to "curtail my activities" and drink plenty of water, etc. All of which I was already doing.

So this weekend, we finished up the last of the grocery shopping. I've got the hospital bags packed (weird feling that) and the car seat base in the car. All that is left is a little pampering of mommy's feet.

So for now we are in the final countdown days to little sister arrives on Aug 28. Hopefully, she will continue to cook a little bit longer but I'm definitely getting ready to meet this little one that has been belly dancing like crazy these last couple of days. I swear I feel like the monster from Alien is going to pop out any second.

Till next time

My little man is growing up:(

Well, today was Ian's first official day of Preschool. He's only going for half days 2 days a week but it is the ending of an era.

He was excited to finally get to use his Cars backpack that I got for him at the last consignment sale and to wear his new shoes.

He did well when we dropped him off and no tears because he was too busy exploring. NO tears for mommy either:)

Hopefully he will cooperate for them today. We will see if they still think that he is precious:)

The house is quiet. That is weird:) Won't last much longer with lil sis arriving soon so I had better enjoy it right.

Ian's First Trip to the Beach

Well, we finally did it. We took Ian to the beach, Panama City Beach,FL, to be exact. We went with some friends of ours. The trip definitely wasn't long enough as we were only went for 2 nights but we will definitely do it again when we can stay longer and I'm not so pregnant.

We left early Saturday morning so we could have some time down there while waiting on our room to be prepared. We stayed at Edgewater Resort in the Windward building right on the beach. It was so nice. We had a balcony and what a way to start the day. Balcony and surf. I miss it. Just being around the water relaxes me, even though people may not realize it. That's what I get for being a Cancerian Crab.

So we go the beach and Ian hates the sand on his feet which I kind of expected since he has always been a little funny about his feet, understandably due to the number of heel sticks the poor boy has had. He was fine once we had him sitting in the sand and he could scoop sand and such. He really enjoyed the pool the most of course.

He hated walking at the edge of the surf until we showed him shells. He has his first seashells already in his treasure box.

We spent all day Sunday at the beach and had fun. On Monday we hit Destin and the outlet mall there. We scored Ian a pair of Stride Rite Tennis Shoes for school for $10:) Woo Hoo The shoes we wanted at the price we wanted.

Hopefully the pictures will show how much fun he had. Can't wait to do it again.

Update time again

Well I've finally got a minute to update. Life has been hectic since Father's day.

As for Ian's little sister, we are at 33 weeks now. She is definitely making her presence known. It is so weird to be this pregnant. So far so good. We took a quick tour of the hospital where we will have her. It was hilarious explaining that we don't have a clue what to do this time around but the nurse we talked to understood and didn't think we were too strange. Ian will be allowed to visit me and sister at the hospital. I was afraid that he wouldn't be and I don't know if I could be away from him that long. So we are on the countdown till August 28 and her arrival. Hopefully she will continue cooking.

We had another shower for her in GA at my mom's house and we got a ton of clothes. Ian of course was the official present opener. Our friends that are expecting as well told us that they are having another boy:) We also watched our boys who are about 6 months apart walk holding hands. It was cute and I didn't have the camera for the picture of them walking down the path. Ian also started calling for Noah and has been saying it since. It is absolutely adorable. We also are going to go to Panama City Beach with them in 2 weeks for a last hurrah before our kids come. We've never done this but have wanted to. So it will definitely be an adventure but fun.

Ian is currently recovering from his eye surgery. This one had me stressed for a week due to an anesthesia doctor that had already decided that he would have issues and would most likely be admitted overnight. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather them err on the side of caution with him especially with his med history and I understand it but don't make your mind up beforehand. Luckily we talked with another doctor before his surgery and made sure that the first doctor would not be the doctor the day of the surgery and this doctor said we can't say for sure he will have issues but we have the room reserved just in case he needed it.

So we headed up the night before since we had to be there at 7 and to get there that early we would've had to leave by 430. So we spent the night in Bham and Ian got some time in the hotel pool and we got to get a couple extra hours of sleep. The surgery went well. We will know the final outcome in about 6 weeks but we can already see a difference. Bless his heart, he looks like he should be in a horror movie with his 2 red eyes. He only had to have one muscle in each eye moved. So the surgery was about and hour and then the wait for him truly began. After an hour and half we were getting antsy and were fixing to ask his nurse to call recovery when she came to get us to go back to recovery. So we thought that meant that they were admitting him. But no.

His recovery nurse was like we had been waiting so long and if that was his kid he would want to see him. So we got to see a new area of Children's even for us old pros.

Ian was sitting up in bed all drugged. The issue was that his oxygen sats were not staying where they thought they should be so they were giving him extra time. He still hadn't fully woke up yet either but part of that could be the pain meds that they gave him an hour earlier. So we sat with him and watched his O2 sats, felt like old times in the NICU. Of course, they would be high when no one but us was there but as soon as a nurse appeared they dropped. Granted the lowest it was was 89/88 with it mostly hanging out at 92-94 range. They were looking for high 90s but we know that he can be 95/96 and that's good for him. However, once the initial wave of the pain meds receeded and he started actually waking up and became more alert, his sats stayed at 96 and up. So we got to go home that day. No hospital stay for us. Thank you God.

So we spent the night recovering or more exact, Ian slept until 630 the next morning. He only had to take one dose of Tylenol with codeine for pain that night. By the next morning, he was his old self so it was hard to get him to stay in bed with me for the day so I could take it easy as well as him.

He is busy being spoiled this week as grandma is here to help wrangle him so I can get some things done around the house. All we have heard since we came home from Albany was Mom, Truck, Yeah, 50 million times a day. So now he is in little boy heaven because grandma with the truck is here and he has her wrapped around his finger literally:)