Monday, July 10, 2017

The last year

This past year has been insane.  We've celebrated anniversaries, birthdays, and we moved to Las Vegas, Nevada.  Rick graduated with his Master's Degree and he has another four years of military service that he is committed to.  We bought our first house and although I love our house, I am seriously missing Ohio. 

What to write about the kids? 

Well, they are amazing and I am constantly in awe of how awesome my children are.  They are growing more and more each and every day.  I love how happy go lucky they are and how forgiving they seem to be.  I make so many mistakes and they love me anyways.  I wish that was something that most people kept with them as they grew older.

Evan turned 7 this last October and will be 8 here in 2017.  He always amazes me with his knowledge and skills.  Honestly, I think this kid might have a photographic memory with how he tends to learn things.  It's either that or he's just obsessed with things.  He loves learning about the human body, maps, violin and piano and is definitely in that sponge phase.

He graduated or was discharged from speech, occupational and ABA therapy this past year.  He is super smart but still has his weaknesses with social skills and writing. 

He recently joined an elementary orchestra on base and chose to learn the violin.  He is doing super well with it, and loves going.  He also does swim lessons once a week. 
With Miss Elli when he graduated from Speech therapy.
Evan loves Nathan so much.

Evan when he initially picked up his violin.

Evan and his close friend Emma.  He misses her so much.
From back in September.  He hates flowers (because of the bees that can sting him). 

Logan is now 5 and loves so many things.  He is super sharp, especially when it comes to picking up on social cues.  He's very friendly and could probably talk the ear off of anything that sits around for long enough around him.  He loves books, and listening to stories.  He is also super obsessed with legos, always asking for new lego sets and talking about them.  He's constantly building things.  He is also our space, rocket and airplane lover.  And, of course, there is his Spider-man obsession. 

He is doing swim lessons once a week and is on a t-ball team for the summer.  This team is so awesome and we're so thankful to have great parents to work with the kids.  Logan's best friend is Evan, and he learns so much from Evan everyday.  They share a room and are practically connected at the hip.  I'm so thankful that they love each other so much, even with all the fighting that they do.
I call him Mr. Photogenic.

Spider-man party

With two of his sweet little friends, Sarah and Alexis right before we moved. 

Logan and his buddy.  Like Evan, he certainly loves his baby brother.
Sadie is now three and oh my, is she sassy.  She has just recently exploded in her talking.  Before her favorite word was "no" and overnight she started speaking in sentences.  She is very bossy, and doesn't mind shrieking at her brothers when they do something that annoys her.

She loves playing outside and getting dirty.  She is very adventurous on the playground, considering that she is still really tiny for her age.  She has no problem climbing up ladders or the rock climbing walls.  She loves dressing up and shopping. She sits for me after bathtime and lets me blow dry her hair so she can look "pretty".  She is very independent--she loves to do her own hair and brush her own teeth while picking out things that she wants to wear.  I love how spirited she is and I hope she always has such confidence in her abilities.

She is such a joy.  Her grin and laugh are so infectious and even though she is a "threenager" now, I just enjoy having her at home with me so much.
Sadie in the sunflowers.
This was her wearing the tea party hat  I made for her birthday party.

Kitty cat ears.  She really has such a keen fashion sense.

This was her just a month ago in the ER for a breathing treatment.  She was sounding like Darth Vader.

Picking out her own outfits is one of her favorite things to do.
Nathan is now 1!  I can't believe how quickly this past year has gone by.  I haven't really blogged about the kid before, so here goes.  He is so awesome!  Easiest baby ever.  At his two month check up we found out that he had a broken clavicle at birth that had healed over already.  Just to show how good he was, we never even knew that or had any clue that anything was wrong with him because he rarely cried (except for the usual things--food, sleep, diaper change).

He loves eating (if you couldn't tell by his chunky size) and was attached to me throughout his first nine months or so until he figured out that it might be fun to learn how to crawl.  He was also our best sleeper.  He slept in his rock n play in our bedroom for several months and I didn't even bother moving him out earlier because he started sleeping for about 6- 7 hours straight pretty early on.  He also started smiling at a super early age. 

He's just a jolly, fat baby and we've loved having him in our family.  The kids all adore him, even though now they're trying to figure out how to redirect him from their stuff gently.  They've also figured out that he likes to pull hair while he pulls himself up to stand.

He was also our earliest (or second earliest--it's between him and Evan) walker.  He really just took off this past week.  He has the brightest, most infectious smile and loves people.  He's super social, so much that he hates napping and going to sleep in his crib because he misses people and doesn't want to be alone. 

We had mustaches in Nathan's taco piƱata.  He wasn't that amused.
During one of our colder afternoons last fall in Ohio.

Sweet baby

He's always stealing food from one of his older siblings.

So happy swinging.
And some more pictures of our family and friends from this past year. 

Love this sweet picture of our family.

Me and my babies on Mother's Day.

My sweet kids at Ikea.  I love this picture.

Rick and I at his AFIT graduation.

From Halloween

This picture!  We had a fun Harry Potter Murder Mystery Dinner last October with several of our favorite people from Ohio.  We miss them so much.

The kids playing with retro cameras during my sister's wedding celebration.

In the sunflowers.

Me and Sadie.

From Christmas Eve.

Rick and his boys. 

Nathan Jens Chappell

Born July 5, 20 inches long and 9 lbs even.  He was measuring big for his gestational age so he had to get some glucose testing to make sure that insulin and sugar levels were normal.  This was my hardest labor and delivery but we've been recovering quite well now.
 This labor and delivery was really rough.  I went in pretty late on the 4th of July. I hadn't started dilating at that point.  But, since I'd had three babies before they decided to induce me a week early with the gels.  We weren't sure how big Nathan was going to be, but I thought he'd be around 7-8 lbs since that was how big my other kids were (except Logan who was only 6 lbs).  I was really concerned about a huge baby.  I didn't want to end up with a c-section because of his weight.  And since he was measuring quite big for a while with the growth ultrasounds (which has been wrong with all my other kids, by the way), we decided to induce early.  Plus with Rick's school schedule, we thought it the best choice at the moment.

I've only been induced with pitocin before and not gels.  Those gels hurt very badly.  I remember it being around 12:00 AM and I put on the Age of Ultron (they have a great streaming video service at the hospital I delivered at) to distract me because of how bad the cramping was.  The second dose of the stuff made my body react even more intensely, and so they had me get up to get it out of me.

I had only dilated to about 2 cm by the time morning came around, and I was feeling a bit bummed out, wondering if we had made the right decision with what was essentially an elective induction.  I was actually pretty weepy.  I remember asking Rick if we should just cut our losses and leave before I was strapped down with the pitocin.  We put on "Ant-man" then to distract me once again, and then I got up to use the restroom and my water spontaneously broke.  So, the decision was already made for us.  I felt so much better about having the baby after that.

I asked for an epidural after that because my contractions got really intense.  Of course it took forever to get it since they had to flush my body with fluids on the IV.  I asked the L&D nurse for a catheter while I was getting the epidural and she said that they don't give them at this hospital.  I wouldn't feel my bladder anyways, because of the epidural.

I remember being annoyed with the answer but I didn't fight it at all.  I wish I would have looking back because I think that and a late and neglected diagnosis of a UTI really messed with my body right after delivery.  After the epidural, the dr checked me and said I was at a 4.  After an hour, the nurse came in, I was a 10.  But the baby hadn't descended yet so they gave me another hour or so, to see if my body would do it on it's own.

After the hour, the nurse came in and started me pushing to get him to descend.  Ugh.  Talk about horrible.  I had started to shake like crazy and I was so cold.  My whole body was trembling and I could barely talk.

Anyways, after about twenty minutes, Nathan was born.  I don't remember a lot of what happened though except being super cold and shaking like nobody's business.  Rick thinks I went into shock from the loss of blood.  I spike a fever as well and while I was getting stitched up, the nurses called the doctor about me because of the heavier bleeding.  She told them to give me a shot that would help with clotting and then they decided to finally hook me up to an IV of antibiotics to help with the UTI. 

After an hour or two I started to feel better and my poor Rick was finally not looking at me so frightened. Anyways, I was glad that everything worked out, I didn't have to be wheeled back for surgery. 

I was only super annoyed that the stupid nurses or lab didn't catch the fact that I had a UTI to begin with.  I should have been hooked up to the antibiotics to begin with. 

These three meeting their baby brother.


I love his chunky little arm.




Everyone looks nice except me in my hospital gown.  Ha ha.




My super cute family.