Lydie's Bedroom

I took some pictures of Lydie's room, but my lack of interior photography skills is apparent once again. We had a professional photographer come and take our family pictures. Some of them were taken in her room. They are beautiful, and I will add them to this post. It will be painfully obvious which photos were taken by the professional, and which were taken by me!
Oh well! These photos were taken on many different days over the past month.

I must admit that I have not been good about training Lydie to sleep well in her crib yet. We are visiting family as I type this, and the goal when we get back is to sleep train her to spend the night in her room. So far it has just been about whatever method gives us the most sleep!
We used a woman named Liz from Coachhouse Pictures out of Chicago for our photos this year. She was so great, and we loved her!
The only baby item we had kept after Walker was the crib. We were starting over with everything else. I tried to buy things for Lydie's nursery that she could use all the way through her teenage years. We will see if my decor addiction allows that to happen! I admit it, I love to change things up!

I did save a couple of little outfits from when Georgia was a baby, but not many. The sleeveless white sundress in the pictures is one of them. The other white dress is Lydie's blessing dress.  My dear friend Susan made the quilt hanging over the side of the crib.  Just as I was thinking about how Lydie didn't have a handmade quilt and all my other babies did, Susan told me she was working on this. All my kids have been given a quilt made by someone we love. Susan's quilt turned out so beautiful, and we love it!

Lydie turns her head to the picture above her changing pad and smiles at it so big every morning. I think all the color makes her happy! Her room is a bright, sweet spot, where I love to rock her, she loves to coo on her changing pad, and the kids love to come and look around at her baby things.

Meeting Baby Sister

It was so much fun to have the kids come meet Lydie at the hospital. My mom came to help the week before I had Lydie, and it made a huge difference in my stress level. There are a lot of logistics to
be worked out when you have four children, don't live near family, and have no idea when number five will come into the world. My Mom being here solidified our plan, and that was great. She was able to bring the kids to the hospital to meet Lydie because she was not born during flu season. They close that privilege right off when the flu hits the community.

Walker was so funny, and excited! As you can see in the video, he kept going back to my Mom and saying, "She's so cute!"
They were all dying to hold her.

We had unwrapped Lydie to try to wake her to eat because the nurses wouldn't leave us alone about it. The video had to be uploaded in sections. So there are several of them. I have no idea if they will link correctly. If they don't play, go to our Youtube channel and you can see them. I have not been having luck with the link for a few months now.

 I just wanted to sleep too, but we figured we better at least give nwrapping her  a try. That was one of the frustrations I had with this birth experience. We were not left alone for any stretch of substantial time to sleep! Our room had a constant stream of nurses and other staff coming and going. After getting a breastfeeding lecture at 1:30 in the morning after being awakened by a nurse, I was more than happy to go home just over 24 hours after giving birth. I was finally informed that there was a "Do Not Disturb" sign for the door after I nearly cried that I just wanted sleep to some random wandering woman wanting to ask me questions. Which still did not detour some of the traffic! Seriously, people! It was so annoying!

Back to the meeting! Wally the biggest brother got to go first!

Will and Lydie Lu.

Big sister Georgia. I am very curious to see how alike these two end up looking. So far, the hair color is sticking!

Walker was so thrilled and sang Lydie a couple of wobbly voiced lullabies.

My Mom and her 13th grandchild. Del's Mom came and visited a couple weeks after Lydie was born.

Here is our newly complete family!

The picture we sent out to friends and family to announce Lydie had joined us that morning.

Some bunny is ready to leave the hospital!

Walker was adamant that she try out her swing.

Del's Mom came to visit over Halloween. Here she is holding her 24th grandchild.

My parents came to visit over thanksgiving. My Dad met Lydie for the first time. We had a lot of fun with my parents in town.

My Mom made the tastiest Thanksgiving dinner for us! thanks for working so hard Mom!

Halloween 2014

The kids went with a hero theme this year.
Wally and Will get harder to find a costume for every year. They would be thrilled to be the goriest, bloodiest thing we could find. But they have a mean mom who won't get on board. They would also be banned from half the parties and activities they get invited to. The boys settled on being skeleton army guys.
Georgia was cat woman, Walker was Batman, and Lydie who was only two weeks old on Halloween was a little black cat.
We were pretty low key considering Lydie's age and my lack of sleep. We went to the church Trunk or Treat, and the kids were thrilled when friends from school, and their parents, were able to come along with us!
Del took them out trick or treating in the cold and wind. Georgia and Walker were content to go up and down our street and call it a night. Wally and Will were game to do the entire neighborhood, and therefore came home with the usual ridiculous haul of a garbage bag full of full size bags of chips, and kind size bags of licorice! Glad this holiday is only once a year! I guarantee they will talk about their trick or treat years in this neighborhood for the rest of their lives!

Wally. It is getting more difficult all the time for people to tell the boys apart. Especially in the same costume, and a mask.

Will

Newborness

In this age of cell phone camera access, Intagram, and Facebook, my photo addiction has run rampant when it comes to Lydie. She is the only one who cannot run away from me, and she is just changing every day. All of this combined with her cuteness means complete picture overload! I have SO many, and she is only two months old! I have decided to get them all recorded here on my blog. So this is a mix of cell phone and Cannon shots. None of which produce a professional result when in my hands.

The pictures are also all mixed up, so Lydie is younger in some at the end. She is a good girl. She is so social, and loves to be out running around with me during the day. She is becoming quit the little talker. Even when we are talking on the phone, she assumes we are directing it at her, and she coos back. It is the softest, most precious sound!
Our basement flooded the week Lydie was born. What a MESS! We had to have a disaster clean up company come rip out all the damage, and have it all redone. It was raw sewage, so that meant nothing was salvageable. The brand new room we had put together for Wally and Will was totally ruined.
Basically remodeling your basement the first month you have a baby and house guests is not ideal in any world. It means lot of workers in and out, and no naps because when the baby is asleep, there is bound to be a stranger in your house. It is put back together now,a nd that has made my life so much easier! Not an ideal situation!

Lydie has past the ten pound mark in weight, and is becoming more consistent in sleeping at night.  We had a couple of rough weeks where she did a lot of crying, and not a lot of sleeping, and I was wondering how on Earth we were going to survive this. To be honest, I was in a bit of a panic thinking there was no way I could keep up. I took her in to see if a reflux medication would help. It did, but now she is doing so well without it, and has mellowed out so much. It is so nice to be enjoying her because we are not so sleep deprived.

As long as she is swaddled. If she falls asleep out of her swaddle blanket, and I don't want to wake her to put her in it, she will wake up at 2 and then 5 in the morning. If she is wrapped tight, she will wake up at 5. She thinks we should be up for the day at that point, and with one more hour before my alarm goes off, I'm not game for that. We are working on getting her back to sleep efficiently so that I can get one more hour in, and get the kids off to school while she sleeps. She is still not a great napper, so that is also something I hope improves as she gets older.

She loves to take a bath and then lay on her changing table and listen to us talk to her, get rubbed down with lotion, and look at the artwork hanging on the wall above her. It is her sweetest time of day, and I tend to take a lot of pictures and video while she is there. Enjoy the picture overload! I think the subject matter is cute enough that I can pull this off. Yup.