Chloe Jean

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to change the title of my blog! Chloe Jean was born July 26, 2011 just before 7pm. It was a quick and painful labor, but we are both happy and healthy! Chloe is the sweetest little thing and we are so happy to have her in our family. Her brothers adore her and are still fighting over who gets to hold her!!Here I am right before my doctor broke my water. After that it's all a blur because it put me into full blown labor and I had Chloe an hour and a half later. I did get an epidural, but because I was progressing so quickly, I was maybe tingly up to my knees before she was born!
But I survived! As soon as she came out, the doctor said, "it's a girl!" I think I responded, "is it really?" He then turned her around to show me and then I started to bawl! Then Mark started to cry as well! We just couldn't believe it. She was such a wonderful surprise!






Pretty good size for being 10 days early!




I noticed right away her right eye eye looked a little different, but the doctor told us it was bruising. We later found out it was a blocked tear duct.





Here we are after she got all cleaned up.

She is beautiful!!

Grandma Jean, Chloe, and our boys!

The day we came home from the hospital. Mark, Chloe, James, and crazy Andrew!

Caleb wasn't quite sure what to think, but he has warmed up nicely to his baby sister.

Sleepy newborn. You can see the tear duct was filling up right away.

Sweet little girl, just a few days old.

Andrew and Chloe.

Her eye was getting worse every day. We took her to her doctor, a dermatologist, a pediatric plastic surgeon, an eye doctor, had a ultrasound, MRI, CT scan and after four weeks we finally got the correct diagnosis (thanks to Dr. Hoffman, the eye doctor). A blocked tear duct! After weeks of stressing (plus she got a cold at two weeks old) we had a date for her to get it fixed!

Here she is 5 days before she had the procedure done.

Here she is a few hours after the probing! My poor drugged up baby, but she did awesome!

And here are a few recent pictures of our little girl! She is now a month old, she weighs over 9 lbs and she slept for 7 hours straight last night!

Here she is doing the baby startle reflex.

Memorial Weekend 2011

Here are a few highlights from our trip to St. George over Memorial Day Weekend. We had a blast, especially the kids (I tried really hard not to be tired and grumpy the whole time) and overall we all had a great time!My 4 handsome boys!!

J and A found a snake's skin



C and J with the horny toads

Hiking to Turtle Wall

Grandma and Grandpa with all 10 of their grandchildren. 5 girls, and 5 boys. Our little tie breaker will be here in about 8 weeks!!

Mark diving into the pool

J

A

We caught 2 horned toads!

My little family stayed a few extra days and we also went to the "Fiesta Fun Park" and played in the bumper boats and the arcade. We also saw the movie "Kung Fu Panda 2" and went hiking and swimming a few more times.

A snowman, a rainy spring and basketball

The snowman is from February and the basketball pics are from March. Just playing catch up!

Spring Break...Arches National Park

As we drove up into Arches National Park for Spring Break this year, Mark said, "This is my Disneyland!" Mark and his family spent just about ever year at Arches, and he really was in seventh heaven and really, so were the boys. Lizards, camping, hiking, dirt, rocks, fires, camping food, what little (or big) boy wouldn't be loving it? Even the 5 months pregnant wife (that would be me) had a pretty darn good time. The weather was a little less than desirable, but overall, we had a really good time. We were fortunate enough to borrow a pop-up trailer (that happened to be just as old as I am) and it was extremely windy one night, but it was a luxury nonetheless. And yes, I'm pretty sure we will be going back again some day.