Announcing Creed Hansen McClellan

I know that you all have enjoyed having Carlie give you updates on how things have been going in our lives. I hope you bear with me as I attempt to fill her shoes for a blog as she recuperates from yesterdays events. I have learned on numerous occasions that trying to fill her shoes is a task that is not easily accomplished.

As you may have noticed, the "days left" blog apparatus (I am not very up to speed on this whole blog thing, so forgive me if I don't use the appropriate blog lingo..) has been removed, and replaced with a music playlist. We will add more music to the playlist in the future, but for now, I just wanted to include one song that I think is very fitting for the occasion.

Well, enough of the fluff introduction, and on to the real meat of the reason for this blog. Creed Hansen McClellan was born on June 23, 2008 at about 2:30 in the afternoon. He was 9 pounds even, and 20 inches long. He has some thick brown hair, his dads nose, and Cameron's little strawberry mark just above his nose between his eyes. No big surprises with any of it. He definitely looks like he fits into our family. The whole time through Carlie's pregnancy, we were asking ourselves "What are we thinking?", but now that he is here, there is no question that he was meant to be with our family.

Carlie was a real trooper through the whole ordeal. Poor girl suffered through about 4-5 attempts to put in an epidural before the anesthesiologist told her that it was just not going to work. Apparently Creed was big enough that he put pressure on her spine that curved it just enough that the epidural tube would not go between the vertebrae. They then gave her a spinal block that really had no chance of kicking in before Creed showed up. So in essence, all of the pain and suffering that she went through to try to block the pain was a worthless attempt because she had to deal with all of the pains of delivery anyway. But she was strong, and did a great job bringing Creed to us.

Carlie's labor was relatively short as usual. She had to be on antibiotics for 4 hours before they could start her, so labor slowly started at about noon. She was just having some mediocre contractions over the next hour, so they broke her water at about 1:15. She then suffered through the whole epidural debacle from about 1:30 until 2:15 or so. Hard labor hit before the spinal block kicked in, and Creed was born just a few minutes later at 2:30.

Carlie and Creed are doing great! Despite having such a big baby, the traumas that can accompany a big baby (I will spare details since I am not exactly sure who will be reading this, but those of you familiar with having a baby will surely understand) were not there, so Carlie should recover quickly. She is understandably tired from the experience, but in good spirits, and bonding well with Creed.

Since Creed was relatively big, he had to deal with low blood sugar through the day, but I think that he has it under control now. He and Carlie are still working on getting on the same page as far as nursing goes, but they have been making great progress, and I am sure that they will get it down soon. Seems that he is more interested in sleeping. Creed also has a little problem with his sprinkling system. The little hole that is supposed to be at the tip of the unit is actually slightly toward the bottom. He will have to go in for surgery when he is about a year old to fix it. They will wait to perform the circumcision until then. They are doing well enough that we should probably be bringing them home today.

Well, that is about all except for pictures, so here are a few for you to enjoy. If I left out any details that you would like to hear about, let me know, and I will include them. Love you all!

5 days to go!!

Wow... nine months has gone by so fast and slow at the same time. I can't believe I only have 5 days to go! I met the new doctor today who will be delivering our boy... she is very nice and young! She's either in her mid 30's or very early 40's. So the scheduled date is Monday June 23, but the time they are actually inducing me is probably around 11, although we are going in at 7 a.m. I have to be on antibiotics for 4 freaking hours before they can actually start me. She did say that I will most likely go quickly once they start me though. Let's hope! I am very done being pregnant! thanks to all who have supported me in this and we'll post again when the little man is here- no, we STILL haven't decided on a name yet. We'll let you know!

Good News/ Bad news...

So I had my 36 week checkup today. Here's what I found out:
Good news- my doctor says she will induce me a week early because of my fast labors, so we are scheduled for June 23 (not bad for an original due date of July 7, which then got moved to June 28). She says I'm not doing too bad for my weight gain- 20 lbs. And last, I only have 20 days to go!!!
Not so good news: She also told me that after 8 months of seeing only her, she will not be in town to deliver my baby! She's going on a cruise. So I get to meet the doctor who will be on call, a week before I am due! Talk about frustrating!
But I think as long as someone besided Mitch is there to catch my baby I will be fine... not that I don't trust him, I just know that he is a CPA for a reason!
Well, let the countdown begin! Wish us luck!

Just a precaution

I just wanted to post a little note explaining why I changed my last post. It has been brought to my attention that having a picture of my little boy and his rash with his unit partly showing, could attract all kinds of problems with sick-0's out there. So due to the sad situation of this world, I took that part of the blog out. And for those of you who are concerned, Collin's rash did go away, and his hole in his mouth is slowly healing, and we had a much better weekend!

We actually just got back from the public library- there was a summer reading kickoff carnival. We were there for two hours, the kids had fun, Mitch was frazzled beyond belief, and my feet and ankles were the size of softballs! GRRRRR.... 4 weeks can't come soon enough! Gotta love pregnancy!

What Next!!!!

Dare I ask???? This week has been quite a doosy- well the past two days to be exact. We found out on Tuesday morning that Cameron's wrist has been broken since Thursday and I finally took him in after the long Memorial weekend! He injured it on Thursday playing soccer at school. He came home with it wrapped up, but the school nurse said she thought it was just bruised and she wrapped it for support. Then on Friday, we were told that he fell in P.E. and hurt it again. We wondered if we should take him to the doctor to get it x-rayed before our trip, but we just wanted to get out of town and he said it was feeling okay. Sooo.... three days and much favoring later... we go to the doctor. Even the doc said he didn't think it was broken, but we took x-rays anyway. Sure enough... there it was, as plain as day, a clean break in the bone! So they put him in this splint for a couple days until we could get him in a cast. I'll post a picture with Cameron and his cast later. (Again, I apologize for the red eyes... any photography help?)

Then on Wednesday, Collin decided to bust his lip open and split his top front tooth in half!

I was in the shower when it happened, but Madeline said he tripped and smashed his mouth into a bar on the weight bench in our room. All I know is that when I got out of the shower, he was crying and bleeding all over the place!

I totally freaked out and called Mitch and told him to come home, which he did. I got Collin right in to the dentist office and after two attempts at the numbing shot, and one attempt with the laughing gas, they told us that he was not calming down enough to be able to do it. He was hysterical!!! So they sent us to the pediatric dentist next door to see if they could do any better. Can I just say... why do parents even waste time at regular dentists for their children? We should have gone to the pediatric dentist in the first place! They gave him some medicine that made him quite drunk- I wish you all could have seen it! Poor little guy couldn't even walk! Then they took him back and pulled the tooth and had him back in 10 minutes! Granted he was drunker than a skunk, but he was smiling his little toothless fat-lipped smile... eyes crossed and all! Then the medicine started to wear off and he wasn't so happy.

Here is Collin, at home and still loopy. Not so smiley.

I finally got somewhat of a smile out of him a little bit later... fat lip and all

Opening up as best he can to let me see his "owee"...

So you can't really see it, but his front tooth is now gone! Poor little guy, he's had a very traumatizing day... we'll be lucky if he agrees to ever go back to the dentist again!

And speaking of dentist, the pediatric dentist just called and asked how Collin was doing and followed up with instructions for how to care for him- what an awesome guy! He also said that it will be a long long while before that tooth ever comes in. (Just like his sister, and hers won't come in until she's 8 or 9 also!)

Talk about a freaking stressful past two days! What's next? Me going into labor 4 weeks early??? Wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake! Please keep your fingers crossed that we will have no more excitement around our house for a little while! Or better yet... pray!

Our Little Dancer

Okay so Madeline's dance recital was actually in the middle of May, and it is now the end of May, but all of you who know me, this should not come as a shock to you! I just wanted to post a little about Madeline and her dance performance. The recording I made is actually the dress rehearsal, and lucky for us, she was a lot more smiley during the actual performance! I kept wondering why she wasn't smiling at all... aparently she was focusing on her teacher on the front row- who wasn't there during their recital. She was just beautiful! Even Cameron's jaw dropped when he saw her come down the stairs... he said "wow, you look really pretty!" That was a proud mother moment!

Madeline has been dancing for two years now and she really likes it. She's not the top in her class, but her teacher says she's right up there with them. Personally, I think she's the best because she's trying her best! I think she is a little doll and I love to see her perform and come out of her shell.

So without further ado... may I present, Madeline McClellan's 2008 Studio C dance recital (dress rehearsal) I apologize for my giggling! It was too cute!

And when it was over, her daddy presented her with flowers and she was on cloud 9! She wanted to go out in the hall and "pose" for some pictures. Apparently she wanted to do some pretty cheesy poses, but Mitch just smiled and clicked the camera anyway. She's got him wrapped around her little finger!

I'm thankful for haircuts and intuition!!!

Well okay, rather than "intuition", it was probably more like an elbowing from the Spirit... here's the story:
My boys go with Mitch to the Father and Sons campout on Friday afternoon. They come home on Saturday afternoon (not a very long break for mom's in my opinion), and they are FILTHY dirty!!! But they wanted to play outside for a while, so I let them before I gave them baths. Just before Collin hops in the tub, I say to Mitch "wow, his hair is getting long, you should cut it." So Mitch takes a look and says, yeah, but we have somewhere to be in 45 minutes, it can wait for another day. So I didn't give it another thought. Then out of nowhere, Mitch says "you know what? I will just buzz him really quick and then he can take a bath." So he proceeds to give Collin a buzz, and I leave the bathroom. All the sudden, Mitch is yelling for me to come quick (I think that he forgot that "quick" and 8 months pregnant do not mix well). So I make my way back up stairs and he has this panicked and disgusted look on his face and he's looking at Collin's head. I asked what the problem was and he told me Collin had a tick in his head right at the base of his hairline- of course, where the hair was longest! Can I just say eeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww!!!! I looked and sure enough, it was halfway in his poor little head! So I called my friend Lara, who is an avid camper, and asked if she'd gone through this before. She said to put vaseline on its butt (who knew ticks breathed through their butts?) and then very carefully pull it out with tweezers- but to be careful to not squeeze the body, because it will detatch from the head- and the head is what you want to get out!
So after about 10 minutes of Mitch struggling with Collin to hold still, he finally got it out. (I am so glad I didn't have to do it by myself, I don't know how I would have handled that!) He made sure he got it all, and then we gave Collin the scrubbing of his life! Talk about messing with my heartstrings! If we (Mitch) hadn't listened to his feelings, we would have never found it or it might have been to late and we could have had a serious problem on our hands!
I also found one on Cameron, but it hadn't gone into his head yet, it was just in his hair. Double eeeewwwww!!! I don't think my boys have ever been so clean!