My little sun baby

Maddie and Jeni have been the best helpers with their new little sister. They wanted to help me give Charity a bath the other day. They each took turns wiping her with a nice warm wash cloth since we can't put her in the tub until the last of her umbilical cord falls off. One would wash her while the other manned the camera. Gracie wanted to get in on the action too. She helped me wash Charity's hair.

When we finished her bath it was still bright and sunny outside (unusual with our crazy weather we are having right now!) so I laid a towel in front of the window, covered Charity's eyes with a hat and laid her in the sunlight to help clear up the newborn jaundice she has.

She didn't like her bath at all but she loved laying in the sunlight. Once the sun warmed her up she was totally relaxed and let me rub her down with lotion without a fuss. A couple of short sessions in the sunlight made an amazing difference in her color! She is a pretty little pink baby now!

Making blocks

You know the old adage about giving a child a present and they would rather play with the box? We had such a moment at our house last week. We got a package and Nathan was dying to open it. He ran and got a little knife and with careful supervision he soon had the package unloaded. I asked him to put the knife away and then went to give Charity a bath. A few minutes later I came back in the room and he and Grace were busy cutting "blocks" out of the packing foam! I had one of those "what-do-I-do-as-a-responsible-parent" moments. Do I freak out and snatch the knife away with a stern lecture about the dangers of sharp, pointy objects? Or do I let him continue on with his careful cutting and let him practice a new skill that was obviously bringing him great joy? In the end I settled somewhere in the middle. With some instructions and many "Be careful!"s from me I let him keep cutting. Maybe that earns me the bad Mom of the Year award but I figure it's a skill he needs to learn at some point and the foam was a good medium for it.

He and Grace had so much fun with their blocks. He would cut them and she would stack them up or pile them back in the box. She would find one that was too big and toss it back to Nathan so he could cut it smaller. They played and played with those silly blocks. They were all pretty small by the time Nathan was finished with them.

Eventually the blocks got small enough that I made Nathan give me the knife and call the project finished. But we made it through without a single cut or scratch, some new skills learned and an afternoon of cheap entertainment for Nathan and Grace.

Announcing the arrival of...

our little girl! Charity Rose was born the day before my scheduled c-section. She didn't want to wait any longer I guess. Tuesday morning I woke up with contractions at 1:00 am or so. I couldn't go back to sleep because they just kept getting stronger, but not regular enough to go to the hospital. They varied from 5-25 minutes apart. When daylight finally arrived I got up sent the kids to school, Bob to work and took a warm bath to hopefully settle things down. It helped and the contractions stopped during the morning. By that afternoon they were starting up again but very random. We ordered pizza for dinner because I wasn't up to anything else and then we headed out to Nathan's Joy School graduation that evening. It was really cute and he had a great time.

When we got home I climbed into another hot bath to see if that would help anything and then went to bed. As soon as I laid down though the contractions really started to build intensity and were more frequent but still not as close together as the doctor had suggested before I headed off to the hospital. But the longer I laid there, the more they hurt and then the baby started it's evening gymnastics which pushed me over the edge. I couldn't take another night of this! I went downstairs and cried on Bob for a while and then called the hospital about 11:30. They said for me to come in and get things checked out. We called Bob's sister to come and stay with the kids and got to the hospital about 12:15 am Wednesday morning. Can I just say that security in the hospital has stepped up a lot since I was there last?! Bob started filling out forms while I waited for someone from Labor and Delivery to come and get me and escort me upstairs.

After they monitored me for a while and my doctor, who just happened to be at the hospital for another delivery finished up, they prepped me for a c-section and rolled me into the OR. Charity Rose arrived at 4:04 am on Wednesday May 25th. She weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces and was 19.5 inches long and beautiful in every way! She had a very healthy set of lungs which she started using as soon as they pulled her out and didn't stop crying until they got her into the nursery and bundled up.

I love pictures of Bob's big hand on the little tiny babies. I always forget how truly tiny newborns are.

Maddie and Jeni couldn't wait to come and see their newest little sister as soon as they got home from school.

Grace didn't even notice the baby at first until someone passed her back to me. She has been fascinated with "Daridy" ever since then. She is the best little helper and wants to be around the baby all the time. Her favorite thing is to help me with Charity's binky by going and getting it for me. Then she drops it a few times, sucks on it a few times herself, plays with it and then finally goes and washes it in the bathtub for me. Sometimes it takes a while to get a binky clean enough to actually give to Charity!!

It's finally time to go home!

Nathan on the other hand really didn't want much to do with the baby at first. It took him a few days to warm up to her enough to want to hold her. But now that he has you can see that he loves her a lot!

Welcome to our family Charity Rose!!

Nathan's last Joy School Graduation

Nathan graduated from Joy School last Tuesday night. This is his third and final graduation as he will go to full time Kindergarten next year. He has enjoyed his Joy School experience very much and so have I. It's a great program that I have really come to love! I love that it is so focused on values and experiences rather than academics. I feel like those will come soon enough! Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from his graduation.
He had four other kids in his class: Luke, Nina, Lydia and Camille. It was fun to get to know some new friends this year.
Nathan will go to Kindergarten this year and Grace is a little young for Joy School so I will take a year off and then we'll do it all again!

Girls night/day out and a surprise!

Bob and Nathan went on a father/son stake camp out a couple of weekends ago so me and the girls decided we wanted to have some girl fun together too. We had a nice dinner at home followed by a special dessert of apple slices, peanut butter, sugar and carmel that Jeni created for us. Then we watched a chick flick that Maddie picked! I was pretty tired after that so we all piled into my room for a sleepover. I woke up during the night with some contractions and debated if I needed to call Bob and have him come home early. But they eventually quit so I went back to sleep and Bob and Nathan finished their camp out!

The next morning I woke up tired and sore but the contractions were gone. After I had a warm bath we dropped Gracie off with my parents and headed out to get a pedicure! The girls were so excited! We ended up in a cute little spa that had a couple of pedicure chairs for kids. Jeni had a big teddy bear and Maddie had the princess chair. The girls got flowers and diamonds on their toes but the girl who was doing my pedicure had something else in mind for my toes. She painted on the cutest little baby feet and polka dots. They are darling! What is it about a pedicure that makes you feel so good? And pretty? Especially when I can't even reach my own toes anymore!

Later that afternoon I was suppose to go to a baby shower for one of the sisters in my ward. My friend Maegan came and picked me up and away we went. As soon as we got there she turned to me and told me that this shower was not only for Catherine but it was a surprise shower for me too!! It was a total surprise! I mean first of all, who expects a shower for baby number five and then, even though they passed out the "surprise" invitations in Relief Society right in front of me (they gave me a special one they printed just for me) no one said anything to me! Not even Bob, who isn't always the best secret keeper when it comes to fun stuff like this and Maddie and Jeni. It was such a wonderful surprise! It was fun to sit and visit, eat and open presents! My baby will have some new things to wear now and not just stained, used three or four times already stuff! It was a great afternoon and it meant so much to me that they would care enough to do this for me and my baby.

Thank you so much to everyone involved! It was wonderful!

Half way there!

Today marks 20 weeks or the half-way point of my pregnancy. Now that the morning sickness has mostly passed I can't believe how quickly this is going! Anyway, Bob and I went in for the ultrasound on January 7th and got to see our little one kicking and squirming and generally looking like a healthy little baby should.
This is a profile picture of the baby. I can't tell if his/her mouth is open in a yawn or if it's the chin tucked down by the chest. What do you think?

This is a picture of the baby's arms crossed in front of it's face.

Here is a picture of the baby's face although it looks like a skull to me, spooky and sweet all at the same time!

We are going to wait until the delivery to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. We did that with Grace and it was so much fun! When I got home Nathan told me that the pictures all look boyish to him but on the other hand there is some study that has been done that predicts the gender of the baby 97% of the time by what side the placenta is on. Supposedly the placenta on the right is a boy 97% of the time and on the left is a girl. Guess what side my placenta is on? Very definitely on the left! So we will have to wait and see if the study is right and the Moultrie tendencies to have lots of girls will continue on or if Nathan's prediction of a boy (no more "dumb old girls" for him) will win out! Can't wait for the end of May!!!