before we know it he is going to be running....

we are so proud of our little man...for the first time tonight he let go of our finger and stood alone. We have been working on this for a while and it has been more of a how fast can you catch me dad, type exercise. But lately he has for a couple seconds balanced on his own and then fallen over. However tonight he stood for a couple minutes...it was so exciting...if you doubt me turn up your volume. We were all clapping and hooting and hollaring. WHen I think of everything he has gone through it is bringing tears to my eyes to think that my baby is going to be walking soon. Praise the Lord for all of our answered prayers.

Jackson had blood work done today at Elkhart General to send to his kidney doc...normal routine stuff. they are just having us do it hear, to allow me another month before having to drive with two to indy. Since I wasn't suppose to birth her until next tuesday and that was even a week before her due date.

on an Avenlea note. we are struggling with the difference between day and night. She is definitely on a different schedule than mom and dad. We are open to any advice on how to reverse this. Today she slept for 5 hours straight from 11:30 am -3:30pm. I know I should have woke her up but I decided a nap was more important, after being up til 11 pm then from 3-5 with her and sleeping in the chair in order to get any sleep at all. Adrian took a shift from 1:30 to 3 too. You would think I would be able to sleep when she fell asleep around 6:30 and I did until Jackson woke up at 7am. Good thing I got them both back to sleep around 8 am and then they slept til around 9am. then I had them both wanting food at the same time. I am telling you this two child thing is rough. It is alot easier to deal with one child's schedule and lack of sleep, cuz you can nap when they nap. about the time you get one to nap the other wakes up or needs food. it is nuts.

I will leave you with my new favorite pic of my two kiddos.. Jackson loves his little sis.
Have a great fourth of July weekend. We will be enjoying company from South Dakota. Jackson and Avenlea's cousin Lauren is bringing the train with Grandma to visit. We are so excited and can't wait for them to get here on Friday.

this big brother loves his little sis....

We really couldn't ask for things to be going better. Jackson is all about helping with his little sis. Although you gotta keep your eye on him. He loves holding her hand, watching her sleep, and giving her kisses.
oh and you can't forget the Hiya bebe...that comes out of his mouth almost every other word.
Too cute. the bottom picture is of this: I ask jackson where's the baby and he did this and said baby. We have also, well Jackson has, learned to say please. He signs it...by rubbing his belly and saying peezzz. So adorable. It could melt the hardest heart. he had a meeting with the nutritionalist the other week and we have evened out his height to weight ratio. We are now in the 75 % instead of the 95 %. So much better. He is up to 29 and a 1/4. We have grown 2 inches since we got out of the cast...which is amazing. We have started cutting molars...yipppppeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Let's just say Dad and Jackson aren't getting much sleep these days. I think we have found at least three teeth that are coming in all at once. He even started drooling last night. Adrian said he carried a kleenex with him, because it freaked him out when the drool would land on his hand as he was crawling. Wish I could have seen this, because it is hard to believe just hearing it...and I think i would have laughed my head off. your proabably wondering how in the world, with a kid who doesn't let anything in his mouth, we know he has teeth coming in. Well we went to Orland and met Kara and Delaney on Father's day for another Myofacial therapy treatment. It went really well. they were able to get in his mouth to do some therapy. He wasn't quite resistant at first, but once he let them...things went very well. I can't explain this therapy very well. But I can say it has made a big difference in Jackson and that is all that counts at this point. We see great things happening after every visit.

As for Avenlea...she is up to 5lbs 1.5 ounces, which was a 7 ounce weight gain in 6 days....we couldn't be happier. We are working well into complete breast feeding. I have to say mom's that have to pump all the time, should be given a grand prize..they are super moms. I can't do it. Hats off you all you mom's that go back to work and pump to keep your kids on breast milk...
She has also grown a little over an inch and a half. Which means bye, bye to all the preemie clothes. She still swims in newborn sleepers but the little newborn outfits are mighty cute.
I will leave you with this picture of my three favorite people...taken on father's day. THis is one happy father. We are so blessed to have two great kids and who knew...he would be celebrating father's day this year with two kids. :)

Avenlea comes home.....

June 14th was a great day...we headed up to the hospital hoping and praying that Avenlea had done really well overnight and we would bring her home. Even though we had high hopes, we knew in reality it was very unlikely that we would be walking out of the hospital today with our baby girl. We were up early to feed her before church and we wanted to talk to the doctor to plead our case. Come on....really with our experience with a newborn, who wouldn't trust us to take a baby home with a few complications. We waited and waited...it really seemed like forever til we saw the doctor, and in reality it was only about an hour after we had gotten there that we were talking to her.

We knew she had gained weight consistently over the last two days, she had held her temp for 24 hours, and she had breast fed for 30 minutes that morning. All things that were positives for her. The doctor was very happy with her progress...and seemed to like the fact that I was willing to bring her in to the clinic everyday if I had to for her to come home. She laughed and asked if she could assess her and then we got the news...the best news we could here. News that seriously was worth missing church for. We decided to wait to call our parents...and surprise my mom and dad when we got home and walked in with her. We didn't think it would take so long to be discharged...when it got past 9:30 they figured it out. Oh well. it was still exciting to bring her home. Jackson was pretty interested in his little sis when she came in too. He just kept saying Hi Bebe...constantly at different volumes...we had to quiet it down when it was right in her ear at max volume...so we tried getting him to whisper...I am sure you all know how that went. He also gave her kisses...not blown ones...he wanted to grab her head, bring it to him and kiss her cheek. We are slowly working on the fingers not heading straight for her face...gets a little scary. I am sure it will all take time... Everytime Avenlea has a bottle Jackson thinks it is his baba...and gets mad...but also wants to eat so we won't complain if we can get him to eat, right? He is also a little bit testy when mom is holding the baby and he wants something. I am sure this will only get worse instead of better as she starts to invade his stuff more. Only time will tell.

first meetings

Welcome to our Family.....here are a few more pictures. Our first pic after recovery. Avenlea all content and decked out in her yellow knit hat accessory. Jackson's first meeting with his little sister. he wasn't sure at first. but they started waving hi....once she cried. We will see what happens when she comes home.

Welcome to the Family

Well June 4, 2009 was quite the day. We welcomed Avenlea Gayle into the world at 3:00 pm only 34 weeks along. She weighed 4 lbs 11 oz and was 17 inches long. She is just as cute as the first one was. We are very thankful that she seems to be a healthy baby. Normally I would say she is a happy baby too but she seems to cry quite a bit so far. Cuddling with her mama seems to be the sure fire solution to calming her down. For those of you who are scratching your head on how to pronounce her name, I will do my best to help. a-ven-lee the "a" is the short sound like in apple or astronaut.

Nichole had an OB appointment in the morning. She had been having some leaking over the past day or so and the OB told her that she should have me come in as well. We were very afraid that they were going to keep her at the hospital on bed rest. Who knows how life was going to work if that happened. When I got to the hospital Nichole was waiting by the elevators to let me know that instead of bed rest we would be having a baby around 2 pm. Quite the mind blowing news. Completely unexpected and nowhere close to prepared we are the proud parents of this beautiful little girl. It is amazing how your plans can change so fast and so drastically.

Nichole should be discharged on Sunday. She has started to get up and move around over short distances. She hasn't gotten much sleep and is still feeling some discomfort from the surgery and the different drugs she has been on. As of right now we are guessing that Avenlea's stay in the hospital will be a little bit longer than Nichole's. She hasn't shown much interest in eating which is very normal for babies born this early. They have put her on an IV to help her stay hydrated and have put in an NG tube to get food directly to her stomach. She is also in an incubator to help her keep her body temperature up. The purpose for all of this is to help reduce the amount of energy that she has to use for these things so that she can rest and grow. We're not sure yet how long they will keep her here but it will probably be a couple of weeks. It's really just a matter of when she is ready to take on these things by herself. Like her big brother she will be a fighter.

Although we hated to see the NG tube go in we know that it is the best for her. It was also funny how much it brought back memories of what Jackson looked like early on. When Avenlea was born it was hard to say she looked like any of us but now we can see how much she looks like Jackson as a new born. As before we will deal with anything that we have to, and although we may not want to, we know that we are capable of doing it.

Thanks to all for your help, prayer, and support. It is very much appreciated.