5 Miles

Today Marcus got his first bath at home (James pointed out he got a bath at the hospital so we can’t call this his first bath ever–but that was a sponge type bath).

He wasn’t very happy at first. He does NOT like being cold and undressing him always makes him unhappy.

Once he got in the water though, he really did calm down. And that’s not a tear drop but a water drop on his cheek. He enjoyed the rest of his bath.

Then I took him out and he wasn’t very happy again.  But he was fine once he got dressed–and then he was awake for the longest stretch of the afternoon yet.

Christmas Day finally arrived, and the first boy awake in our house was Marcus!  I was surprised when he woke up at 7:30 to eat and no one else was up!  The late night before resulted in the “big boys” (as I’ve taken to calling them) sleeping in. 

The boys woke up around 8, I heard Will waking up Alex in their room.  They got up and opened their stockings and played with their gifts from Santa. Alex was pulling out some Matchbox cars from his stocking and he made me laugh when he said “This is the car I ALWAYS wanted! ALL of them are!”  I’m glad my random placement of cars fulfilled his desires.

After that we headed up to Mom and Dad’s house. Thankfully we just had rain all day, so our drive up there and back had no problems. (I found it a tad bit ironic that my friends in Dallas got to have a white Christmas and we did not, but was happy they got to experience it. And with all our driving it was nice to not have to worry about weather.) Once we got to Mom and Dad’s, we had a big breakfast–much to the boys dismay, they really wanted to open presents. FINALLY, we got started with the big event!  Of course, the biggest hit amoung the adults was Marcus, as everyone fought over holding him.

The bigger boys weren’t left out though!

The boys were REALLY excited over their Colts jerseys, and wanted to wear them right away. They also wanted to wear them today, until we pointed out if they did, then they couldn’t wear them tomorrow (Game Day!). So they took them off. Alex pointed out these are the HOME jerseys and was glad to find out the Colts play at home tomorrow. Both are excited about wearing them tomorrow.

Will’s other favorite gift.

Alex’s other favorite gift (a mobile crane).

Heidi gave Marcus a snuggly-bear coat…Hard to believe he can be even MORE snuggly, but he can!  After opening gifts, it was great fun to play with all the new toys!

Whoops! The suction cup nerf dart gun was a gift from the Aunt/Uncle. (Each boy got one, plus extra darts!) (And in case you’re worried, this was a staged photo, James put the suction dart on his head and Aunt Heidi had Will pose.)

We had Christmas lunch around 2 and then played games and with toys all afternoon. We headed home after a small supper and all of us headed to bed (the boys had a harder time settling down to go to sleep then I did). It was a long but nice day.

With the baby around, it’s almost easy to forget we had Christmas in here–except we have two boys that were VERY eager to remind us!  The count down to Christmas has been happening all week. Tuesday James took the boys sledding and Wednesday they all went to the Children’s Museum to play, those helped the days to pass a bit quicker. Thursday was my day to let them paint, and they surprised me with what a great job they did being creative–not just slapping paint on paper (as some of you have seen when we’ve used their art in cards).  Then, Thursday night we went to the Christmas Eve Service at church. It was a beautiful service and it was nice for me to leave the house. Marcus was very good during the service, he slept the whole time!  After the service we went to finish our looking at lights (it was hard to believe it’d just been a week earlier we’d been looking at lights and Marcus wasn’t here yet).   Then we came home and opened our “Swedish Gifts”, gifts from the Miles/Grover side of the family with Swedish backgrounds.

You can tell Marcus is quite exicted about the duck he got from Grandma Lo.

James and I are both excited about the gifts from Aunt Betty (check out Marcus in James’ lap–he’s happy too!)

 The boys enjoy a bite of the candy from Aunt Betty. After this they were off to put treasures in the boxes Grandma Lo gave them.

Today Mom and Dad brought the boys back and they and Mom got to meet Marcus for the first time. They were quite exicted to meet him. From what I remember they were surprised with how tiny he was.  They walked in as I was feeding him. Once I was done, Will couldn’t wait to hold him.

By the end of the day Will told me,  ”I’m pretty used to babies now…well, I’m used to him!” and “Newborn babies are pretty cute!”

Alex observed “Mommy, your belly is smaller, but not that small.”

Marcus was fussing and James popped a paci in his mouth, the one we got at the hosptial.
Alex saw it and said “It’s PINK!” 
“You don’t think he’d want a pink one?”
“NO!”
“What color should he have?”
“Orange”

The boys told us the favorite part of the day was playing with Uncle Doug. So we have our token shot of him/them playing.

We’ve decided he has Alex’s head shape, but features that remind us of Will.

Will–one day:

(Will had a more pointed chin and longer neck that you can’t see in this picture. Both Alex and Marcus have rounder faces…but yeah, they all look the same here!)

Alex-one day 

First Bath (A picture of the hair for Grandma Lo)

Recovering

Visitors! Uncle Doug fresh off the plane form AZ and Grandpa Harbin (Grandma stayed at their home with Will & Alex–visitation restrictions because of the H1N1 outbreak meant no one under 15 could visit us…the boys will meet Marcus Monday morning.)

Getting ready to go home

This made me laugh. I love the JOY outfit, it so fits how we feel about him, but he was NOT feeling the joy at that moment. I knew Heidi and Doug would find this funny.

As we were heading home, I was telling James how much I appreciated him this weekend. Too often now we’re splitting up the kids or passing off the kids and doing things separately. It was nice to have him around all weekend. We were laughing about our “Weekend Away”–aside from the whole labor & delivery and newborn part, we had a chance to get away, breakfast in bed each morning, all meals catered–what more could we ask for?!? (Well, for a starter, none of the recovery or middle of the night feedings!)   We are thankful to be home and VERY thankful Marcus is healthy.  Thank you all for your prayers through a difficult pregnancy. Now we’re going to use the next week to adjust to a family of five and to celebrate a low key Christmas.

…Or, “No, We Did Not Intend To Name Our Child After A Retired Football Player.”

So as we started telling people Marcus’ name, we had a few people ask why we named him after a football player. Um…whoops! (Marcus Allen played with the Raiders and the KC Chief’s, from 82-97…I hadn’t even thought about it, but maybe that’s why the name sounded “right” to us!)  (Ironically, we had talked about Austin Miles for awhile, but one of the reasons it lost out was because of Miles Austin–a football player on the Dallas Cowboys!)  So I thought I’d explain a bit behind the thought process of his name.

First, Allen is a family middle name. My grandfather, father and brother all have it and I wanted it to go on for another generation. We found out James’ mom’s brother also had that name, so I REALLY wanted to use it. That left us to find a name that went with Allen Miles.

There was lots of debate, and this time around it had to be met by approval by FOUR people.  In the end, Alex mentioned the name.  As we looked into the meaning, I found it interesting one of the meanings could be “Protector” (both William and Alexander mean that).  I also read it could have come from ”Mars, the Roman mythological god of war. Others, however, think it might be from mas (manly) or from the Greek malakoz (soft, tender).”  I liked the idea of him being a tender protector.  Then I read how Mark comes from ”Marcus, the personal name of St. Mark the Evangelist, author of the second Gospel. The name was borne also by a number of other early Christian saints”, and that sold the deal for me.  James liked it, the boys liked it, so we were set. (Austin lost out because I was wanting to keep each child’s name starting with a different letter and because I liked the trend of more tradational names. Plus, I grew up in Dallas–how could I name my child after Austin?!? )

I was thinking we’d call him Mark, and continue our tradition of strong names that we shorten to 4 letters that are easy for kids to write. James wanted to stick with Marcus. Right now it seems James is “winning”–he seems more like a Marcus then a Mark or Marc.   We’ll see!

We are thrilled to announce Marcus Allen Miles was born Dec. 18th, at 4:50. He was 7 lb, 5 oz, and 19 inches long.  If that’s all you care about, you can stop here. If you’d like a more detailed description of the labor/delivery, go below the picture and you can read it.

If you read the post below you saw that I came into the hospital to be induced at 6 am this morning.  There were a few tiny issues. With my liver problems, they wanted to do a check to make sure there were no problems with my blood clotting (clotting factors are made in the liver…the Dr. didn’t think there would problems but he had to make sure). So until that test came back, there would be no epidural…and when they tried to break my water without the epidural, it didn’t happen.  Because we induced, he hadn’t dropped yet, and it was too far to reach the water without some pain meds. It REALLY hurt when he tried.  So this put everything on a delay.

By noon the epidural was in, the water was broken, and I was up to 4 cm (I was only 2-3 when I went in).   I spent the afternoon updating the blog, snoozing, and watching TV. At 3 I was checked and was at 5 cm. At 4 I complained because my epidural was wearing off and I was going from discomfort to considerable pain. And pressure. When checked again, I was 9 cm–so obviously things were moving fast!    I was surprised at 4:20 when they wanted me to start pushing, I didn’t feel the urge to push that much, nor did I seem to be that effective. But the nurse kept encouraging me and I realized I really wanted to eat some supper, so I was motivated! I was really amazed that he was out by 4:50! I really didn’t push that much, and was thankful he came out so easily. 

Once he arrived I got to hold him right away, but then the nurse was concerned that he was working hard to breath and cry. So she brought over two NICU nurses to check him out and work on him. They really had to work to get him to keep crying, and wondered if either his lungs weren’t quite developed or if his blood sugar was high.  We’re now wondering if he’s just a laid back baby, because he hasn’t really cried much since.  They got him to a point where he was working less and his blood sugar levels tested fine.  Then I got to hold him again and try to feed him. He also took his time starting to eat but once he started, he kept going for an hour! I finally decided he was just using me as a pacifier and let James hold him, and then my food came. I was SO ready for it since I hadn’t eaten since 5:30 this morning.  I really enjoyed my meal while James held him and then the two of them went off to give him a bath.  Since then we’ve moved over to the postpartum part and are just recovering and enjoying snuggling a newborn baby.  Thank you all for your prayers and support!  I’ve really appreciated the encouragement I’ve gotten, especially on Facebook today. It was so great to get encouragement all day long!  

For those of you NOT on Facebook, boy have you missed out the last few days!  Here’s a summery of what’s been happening in the last two days.

Thursday–I went in for my Amnio. (I have no idea how to spell the full word so I keep shortening it!) I was rather nervous. Turns out it wasn’t that bad! I wouldn’t want to do it again, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Then I went across the hall and had my last monitoring session. Baby was active and all looked good. That afternoon I got a call saying his lungs were mature so we were on to induce on Friday!

We decided to do one last family activity Friday night–we went out to look at Christmas lights. We went to a big light display we like to visit each year, and then stopped to get milk shakes to drink while looking at more. Sadly, at the drive thru, the window went down and then didn’t go back up. While it wasn’t THAT cold out, it was with a window all the way down! So we had to come home a bit early so James could fix the window. Poor Alex was the one behind him and he was COLD.  (Drinking a milk shake during that time sure didn’t help!)  Thankfully James was able to figure out it was the lever and was able to get to Autozone to buy a replacement part before they closed and before the Colts game started. He got it fixed so Mom and Dad can use the van while they have the boys for the weekend.

I was told to be at the hospital at 6 am this morning (Friday).  We stayed up to watch the end of the Colts game & I didn’t sleep that well with the excitement of today, so it was a bit hard to get up and get over here! But here I am!  James stayed home with the boys and got them to school, then met me at the hospital.  They got me started on the drugs and since then it’s just been a matter of waiting. At this point I’m getting drugs to get the labor to start, I have the epidural & my water has been broken. The hospital has wireless so I’ve been able to update the blog and chat with people online, it’s been quite nice!   You can tell this is Baby #3, I had no problem coming in on my own, I knew there wasn’t much James could do–though I do appreciate his company now as we just sit and wait. I’ve been posting updates on Facebook as well, and we’ll try to keep this updated today and tomorrow with pictures of the little guy when he is here. (It’ll probably be a day or two to get things put up, I do know enough to know once he comes we’ll be a tad bit more busy!    Thank you all for your prayers!

Wednesday morning Alex’s preschool had a very low-key Christmas program.  Alex and I were sad it was during the day–Alex wanted Will to see him sing.  I was sad James and Will couldn’t join me, it was sad to be the only person there.   But it was a short time, and it was nice to be low-key.

Here is his class singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Christmas Star.

Then the whole school sang Jingle Bells. There are a LOT of boys at the school!  After this we sang Happy Birthday to Baby Jesus and then went back to the classrooms to have birthday cake.

December 11th was our church’s Kids Christmas program. Will was in the choir. Alex was asked to be part of the Nativity at the end of the program (They asked preschoolers who had older siblings in the program to take part).

Here are the kids during the dress rehursal. Alex and the angel were playing with the gold coins he was carrying in his pouch (purse? bag? man purse? murse?) to give to Baby Jesus.

This was the beginning of the actual program. Will had so much fun singing and dancing.

Then, during the last song the kids came on stage…this time around Alex stood in the back (I think it was better when he was in the front).

Here is the full stage view.

By the end Alex got a bit bored and went to visit a friend.

It was fun to see the boys both enjoy singing and taking part in the program. Mom and Dad came down to watch and they loved having Grandpa and Grandma there.