Changes

Wow, everyone changes so much so quickly. Gretchen is growing like a weed. She moving around and grabbing on to things. She's even started to grab onto her gym to help her roll over. She hasn't gone over yet, but she's almost gotten to her side. She's starting to laugh too. This is a cool age.

Tyler is so much fun. He's enjoying all the things he doesn't remember from last year. Halloween was so much fun. Now he's talking about Christmas and Santa Claus a lot. It's so neat to see his little mind working. He is such a smart thinker... and a talker. Man, does he talk. Sometimes he doesn't stop talking. But it's so cute.

Here's his first picture of a person. Not to bad for a three year old!


Below are some of the family pictures we got taken together. I'll try to get Halloween pictures next time.

Time Flies

Wow, it sure does... Gretchen is almost 11 weeks old now. I'm gearing up to go back to work on the 20th. I really enjoyed my time off with the kids. I think it was more fun this time around because I could do more things (like go to the zoo with someone who will see the animals)


and go for walks and stuff. Although having two kids, that made some things a bit more difficult--like going to the grocery store on my own. We've had a blast though.

Gretchen is changing more and more every day. The day she turned two months old, she started smiling. My heart melts every time I see it. I have a picture from my sister, but I'm on the wrong computer, I think. I can't seem to find it here. I will post it when I get the chance.

Tyler is turning three next weekend. He's amazing. He talks up a storm in full sentences and amazes me every day. He loves his little sister to death and always wants to hug and kiss her if someone else is holding her. And gosh, he's so cute!

Well, that's all for now. I'll post more pictures later, if I can. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my last week at home.

A few more photos

Here's a couple more photos I wanted to include in yesterday's post but didn't get the chance. This first one is one that my sister took in the hospital. It's our first family photo with Gretchen. I love this picture! (Thanks, Nease!)


This next picture has become somewhat of a bedtime routine. It's so adorable, I had to take a picture of it. Even this one doesn't show the heart-melting moments we feel every night at bedtime.

We take Tyler upstairs to get into bed, change his clothes, then he (and we) sing "Jesus Loves Me" to Gretchen while she lays in Tyler's arms. We used to sing this to him before she was born and now we're all singing it to her. My heart melts every night when I see him hug her while singing, then he kisses the top of her head and says "Night night, Baby." It's so sweet.

Keep checking for updates... I'm off for another 10 weeks, so I plan on posting often (we'll see if that really happens or not....nap time will be more important for a while).

New Gretchen Photos

Well, she is two weeks old today and doing amazing. Gretchen is gaining weight like she should, sleeping well at night (knock on wood) and is the joy of all three of our lives. Tyler loves her... he asks where she is every time he wakes up. It's so cool to see him loving her like that and not asking to send her back :)

Here are a few photos I've snapped in the past week or so that are my favorites.

This is Gretchen in her preemie outfit. She got a couple that just fit her when we got them but are already getting small on her.

Here are the happy siblings. A lot of people say they look alike... What's your opinion? I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong.

Her shirt pretty much sums it up...

This one is from today when we were getting ready to go outside this morning. It was a little chilly, but I thought this was too adorable not to photograph.

That's about it for today. It's my first day home with the kids by myself and I actually got time to do this! It's been a good day so far...

Baby on board

Hi everyone. I just wanted to announce the birth of the newest addition of our family. Gretchen Kristine Miller was born on Monday, July 28th at 11:02 am. She was a week earlier than planned but we welcomed her with open arms.

My contractions started Sunday night about 1/2 hour apart, then progressed through the night. At 5am on Monday they were 8 minutes apart. We called my doctor and since I had a c-section scheduled for the next week, she told me to go in right away to be checked. We made all then necessary phone calls to family and eventually made our way to the hospital. It turns out the contractions were not laboring contractions (although they felt pretty painful for me) but between her heart rate deceleration and the fact that I had a section scheduled anyway, the doctors decided to go ahead and perform the surgery so I wouldn't have to go through all that just to come back again the next morning.

Gretchen was 5lbs 9 oz, just one ounce lighter than Tyler was, and 18 inches long. Tyler was 19 1/2, so she doesn't look as scrawny as he did. She's still pretty tiny though.

This whole experience is amazing. To think that she was in my belly two days ago, and now she's here. And to think that my body has known how to take care of this little baby for the last nine months and even now that she's here. God certainly knew what he was doing when he created life.

Tyler seems to love his little sister so far. There are some adorable pictures of them together floating around (if you took one, email me!) Everything is well and we should be coming home from the hospital tomorrow. The only access I have to pictures right now was my cell phone, so that's where the one above came from. When we get home I'm sure we'll be sending out a nice montage of pictures. Stay tuned!

Waiting and working

Just over three weeks to go, at the longest. We still have a lot of work to do, getting things ready, but the list is getting smaller. Tyler is in his "big boy room" now and we're washing all the baby clothes and blankets and stuff. My hospital bag is packed and in the car, just in case.

With the average temperatures being in the mid 80's or higher, I'm definitely starting to feel majorly pregnant. My feet are swelling just about everyday. Not a ton, like I've heard about, but they hurt before I even leave the house for work now. My back has been bothering me a lot this past week. I sit almost 8 hours a day at work and everytime I get up I have to move pretty slowly in order to work the pain out of my tailbone/sciatic areas. It's quite humorous--I'm sure the guy that sits next to me laughs at the "show" every time. I've been trying to get up more often, but that doesn't seem to be helping either.

Other than back pain and feet swelling, I've been feeling pretty good. I've been having a considerable number of Braxton-Hicks contractions ("practice contractions" as they call them in pregnancy world). They're not doing anything except getting my body ready to go into labor. I could have them for weeks before anything happens. I thought Monday I was going into labor though. They were so often, I started timing them. One way to tell if they're real or not is if they are consistently apart from one another and if they start to intensify--neither of which were true. I had them anywhere from 15-25 minutes apart all day at work, but nothing consistent.

Work is going well. I've been training my replacement for about a month and a half now and she seems to be doing a great job. She'll be fine as soon as I'm gone and not her crutch anymore. I'm definitely looking forward to the 12 weeks at home and not working though. I saved all my vacation time in order to get paid for my time off and it's starting to take a toll, not having any days off of work. Soon.... :)

Well, I'm off to finish cleaning and getting baby stuff ready. Weekends are busy doing this, since I'm too exhausted on the weeknights to do much.

Six weeks and counting....

Six weeks from today (or sooner) we'll be introducing a new little baby into this world. Our c-section is scheduled for August 5th. It's only four days before my due date. Tyler was five days early, so we kinda hoping that I'd go earlier than the 5th. Although we have so many birthdays and celebrations in the week before this, that I'm glad the baby will have his/her own day (I hope).

Are we ready? Not really. We've been trying to get Tyler's "big boy room" ready to move him into that so the baby can go into his old room, but things just keep getting in the way of us working on it. I've got most of his clothes moved, the ceiling fan is installed, but that's about it. And that's just HIS room. We've gotta wash all the baby clothes, pack my hospital bag and the baby's.... whew! It's overwhelming! Where did the last nine months go?

How am I feeling? Pretty good, believe it or not. This last trimester has actually been the best that I've felt the whole pregnancy. I'm really starting to swell though, in the heat, and that's not comfortable. Thankfully it's not really bad--yet. I can feel it in my fingers and my feet. Other than that, I'm not as exhausted as I was in the first and second trimesters. Weird, usually the second one is the best. Not for me, I guess....

Well, we'll keep you posted on how things are going with the baby. And no, we don't know if it's a boy or girl yet. Tyler tries to guess, but it changes every time. Oh, and according to him, the baby's name is Ebenezer. Yeah, that's because Grandma Gayle (my mom) won't stop bugging us about what names we've picked (which we haven't really yet) so I told Tyler to tell her it's Ebenezer. It stuck. :) Six weeks (or less) to go......

Pictures

I promised some pictures from the hospital and 10 days later, I have them downloaded finally. They are pretty sad looking, some of them. I'm going to try to post them chronologically from the day Tyler was admitted to the day he went home.

Here he is in the ER after being admitted and calming down from all the poking and prodding from nurses, doctors and student doctors.

Here is Tyler right after we got to see him in the recovery room. His arms are bound so he didn't pull any of the tubes out. Except that once he got used to them, they took them off and forgot to put them back on. He ended up pulling out his NG tube. Ouch. Mommy had to help the nurse put it back in at 3:00 in the morning.


Here is Tyler the day after his surgery (Saturday), wiped out, with his best buddy, Marty the Moose.

Sunday was a breakthrough day. Tyler was sitting up a lot. His face is so swollen here from all the IV liquids they gave him.

Here he is on Tuesday, in his cute hospital pj's and his Spiderman slippers. Doing better and better each day... He got his IV out this day.

This is day six in the hospital--the day he went home. Here he is in his pj's again, in the playroom. He seems pretty happy to be going home.

And he was. This is Daddy and Tyler at home now, doing one of their favorite things--singing.

And here's what his scar looks like after the steri-strip was taken off. Not too bad. He doesn't have stitches or staples to worry about. The doctor must have used the new medical glue stuff to close him up.

Tyler is doing great now. He's just about back to normal, although very clingy and wanting Mommy and Daddy a lot. That's to be expected though, after what he went through.

What a week...

It has been a very hectic week around here. Tuesday night last week, Tyler woke up screaming in pain, and was up all night. We finally got it out of him that it was his stomach that hurt. We seemed to calm him down enough and he still wanted to go to the babysitters. Wednesday night was a little better--he only woke up once. So, he went to the sitter's again on Thursday. That morning she called me suggesting I set up a doctor's appointment for him because he was so lethargic and not himself. Normally, after two days I wouldn't bother, but he had gone through something very similar two weeks before so I called the doctor and set up an appointment for that afternoon. About and hour later, the sitter called me back and said she didn't want to alarm me but that he was pointing to the right side of his stomach and she was worried about his appendix, with the way he was acting. I let her know that I had already set up an appointment for that afternoon, since he wasn't doing so hot.

So, I took him to his appointment that afternoon and the doctor saw him. She checked his stomach and ears, mouth and such and said she wanted some tests done--x-ray or CT scan. She was going to call the radiologist to see what he suggested. In the meantime, Justin made it to the doctor's office to hear the rest of the news: she wanted us to go immediately to Toledo Hospital's ER because she was also worried about his appendix. Not only were we not going to St. Luke's, which was really close, she didn't want us to wait, she wanted us to go right now.

We took the long 1/2 hour drive to Toledo Hospital and got to their ER. Tyler had several nurses and doctor prodding him and poking at him. He got an x-ray of his belly, too. I heard the ER doctor say he was going to call the surgeon for his opinion. When he came down and saw Tyler, he said they were going to start him on antibiotics that night and then perform the appendectomy in the morning. Imagine our shock! The little research I did before his appointment told me that appendicitis on 2 year olds are so rare. Not only did he have it, but it ruptured too. They told us he could be in the hospital for up to seven days!

Friday morning the surgery came bright and early, first thing. When he finally got out, an hour and a half later, I was so glad to see my baby. He was groggy, but asking for us.

Each day in the hospital got better and better, but Sunday was the turnaround day. He spent a lot of the day up and about, in the play room and reading. From then on he just got better and better, and actually got to come home on Wednesday, earlier than we were expecting.

I have to admit, when we were told to go to Toledo Hospital, I was worried. I knew we'd get the best care, but I wasn't sure how the nurses would be. I was used to St. Luke's--small and personal, where I had Tyler. Toledo Children's Hospital was great. The nursing staff that treated us was awesome. After a long first night in a shared room, they went out of their way to get a room cleaned for us and to move us to our own room which we had the rest of the week. It takes a special person to do what some of these nurses had to do on children and I commend them.

Tyler is still recovering, but doing a whole lot better. He's still in pain, but only because his intestines are swollen and irritated. Other than that, his inch long incision and stomach doesn't seem to bother him.

I do have to thank all the visitors and calls we received on top of gifts and prayers. I don't think we could have gotten out of the hospital so quickly without all the caring family and friends' support that we have. Thank you!!!

By the way, we took a bunch of pictures from the hospital. I'll post some of those later.

Big Brother

Wow, it's been way too long. We've been so busy around the Miller camp that this is one of the last things on our minds. A lot has happened since July. But the biggest thing has to do with the title of the blog... and no, it's not a reference to the book 1984. It's a reference to Tyler.... yep, you guessed it. He's going to be a big brother! His little sibling (no we're not going to find out) is due on August 1st. We're so excited, even Tyler. He talks about the baby in Mommy's belly but sometimes says it's in his belly. It's so adorable.

It's amazing how two pregnancies can be so different. With Tyler, it was a breeze. This time, I've had it all--nauseau, irritability, emotional....everything. It'll be worth it though, when I get to hold my little one :)

I'll have to write more later. Just wanted to get this one out there.