Arden – 2 months

Arden turned two months last Friday (the 15th) and had her two month check up the same day. She is still in the 90th percentile for height at 23 1/2 inches and is in the 75th percentile for weight at 12 pounds, 2 ounces.

View Full Album

This month has been marked by lots of smiles and sweet cooing. She is so social – she just loves talking to people and looking at their faces. She still loves being on her changing table and is also a huge fan of her Baby Einstein play mat and the light-up star on it. She will smile and talk to that star for so long. Huston always loved it when he was a baby, too. She loves having her clothes taken off when we’re changing her and she also seems to really enjoy her baths. She never cries when I’m washing her – she just gets sometimes looks surprised or curious about the whole experience.

She still eats about every three hours – usually around 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, and 7 pm, and wakes up once a night, most often around 4 in the morning. (Edited to add that I also wake her up to feed her at 10 pm before I go to bed. Not that interesting, but I want to remember it.)

Huston just absolutely adores her and will still yell “Arden!” if he doesn’t know where she is. He doesn’t like it when I put her down for a nap. He always wants her to be where we are. It’s so sweet to watch him with her.

Huston Funnies

Funny #1

Conversation between Huston and his red screwdriver two days ago (said in a super-high falsetto voice):

Screwdriver: Hello, Huston. How are you?
Huston: Great! It's good to see you.
Screwdriver: Bye Bye!

Funny #2

I’ve told Huston that Daddy is a lawyer but he pronounces it in the most hilarious way. He says “Daddy go work in office with whales. Daddy work with whales. He’s talking to whales in his office.” Sometimes, I think Clarke would prefer being a whale to a lawyer. :)

Christmas Eve

It’s snowing!  What an unusual and happy occasion for us Texans – to not only have snow, but on Christmas Eve of all days!  We took Huston outside for a few seconds so he could play in it.  Of course he refused to wear a hat (and he doesn’t have gloves at the moment), but he squealed with delight and enjoyed his few moments outside.

View Full Album

Catching Up – Arden at 1 month, Huston at 28 months

Arden turned a month old on December 15th.  She weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces at birth, 9 pounds 5 ounces at 2 weeks, and 10 pounds 6 ounces at a month.  She was in the 90th percentile for weight at a month and the 95th percentile for height (at 22 and a half inches).  She has gorgeous eyes that are still a beautiful shade of blue.  It seems likely that they’ll turn brown, but they haven’t changed yet.

Though it’s difficult to pinpoint when her first smile was (since she smiled in her sleep and gave little glimpses of smiles from time to time), I’m going to go ahead and say it was on December 2nd.  She smiled at her daddy and at me at different times that day, and it was clear she was smiling right at us.  Since then, she’s been smiling more and more.  Her favorite place to be is on her changing table – she always gives the biggest smiles there.  She also likes when her daddy moves her legs fast like she’s bicycling.  It usually elicits a big smile from her, or at least a very happy look on her face.

View Full Album

Her first two weeks, Arden woke up about every three hours at night and would frequently be wide awake for an hour or two at a time in the middle of the night.  At about three weeks she settled into waking up about twice during the night – usually around 1 or 2 am and again around 4 or 5.  On December 16th she only woke up once, and the very next night she slept an 8 hour stretch, only waking once at 4 am.  Since then she’s reverted to waking up twice a night, but she seems to have gotten her days and nights straightened out and no longer stays awake for long stretches at night.

Huston continues to be an amazing big brother.  If he comes into the room and doesn’t see Arden, he’ll yell “Arden!” until I tell him where she is.  He frequently leans over to give her hugs and says “Are you okay, Baby Arden?” when she cries.  He insisted upon helping give Arden her first bottle and did such a good job!

Huston’s favorite toys of the moment are two of Clarke’s empty deodorants, his collection of three clocks, three screwdrivers (which have been popular since helping Daddy assemble his bookshelves), the lights on Arden’s swing and bouncy seat, and of course, his Bear Bear, who continues to be his very best friend.  He likes to put his two deodorants on the floor close together and then spread them apart and say “open them – just like a door!” and then walk through the opening and say “go through them – just like a door!”  If one of his screwdrivers or clocks or deodorants is missing, he’ll yell “Blue deodorant!” or “Big clock!” because it’s impossible to play with his toys unless his collection is complete.  He’s getting better about looking for his toys by himself, and it’s pretty funny to watch him search for them.

Huston loves playing the “no” game, where he intentionally says something he knows is wrong, like “Arden starts with ‘Q’” and then says “nooooooooo, Arden starts with A.”  He’s terrified of the “Happy Birthday” song and will recoil at the mention of it and scream through the entire thing if anyone dares sing it around him.  However, he’ll sing it over and over to himself when he’s alone in his bedroom falling asleep.

He is incredibly verbal this days and keeps up a constant stream of chatter.  We just love how he talks, constantly mixing up his pronouns and saying “you helped me” when he means “I helped you” or “you fall down” when he means “I fell down.”  He likes to says “Are you all done” when he’s finished eating and “Are you so hungry for food” when he wants to eat.  He also stretches out the last word of every sentence, creating an adorable style of speaking all his own.

He likes to sing the ABC song and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  He likes watching the “ooh whoo Back show” as he calls the “Dick Van Dyke Show” and knows almost all of his numbers from 1 to 25.  He is unbelievably obedient and sweet, with only the occasional flashes of temper and resistance common to two year olds – usually when he’s overly tired.  More and more, he’s enjoying playing with his friends and just screams and laughs at everything they do.  Most recently he got to play with his buddy Enoch on our trip to Arkansas with friends, and with his friends Logan and Hailey when they came to visit.

View Full Album

We feel so blessed to have these two precious, healthy, beautiful children.  Thank you, Lord.

James 1:17 “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.”

2 weeks

Here's a picture of Arden at 2 weeks. (Thanks, Truitt! You're an awesome photographer and father-in-law!)

Things are going well with us for the most part, except for sleeping. Arden continues to think that night time means playtime. Last night she was up from 3 to 5 am, just as wide awake as can be. Huston has been the sweetest big brother so far. He laughs at Arden, talks to her, and asks about her. He cracked me up yesterday with one of his comments. Lately he's been really into telling his "Bear Bear" no to things. He'll say "No, no Bear Bear get in shower" or "No, no Bear Bear go outside." He was doing that yesterday and came into the living room where I was feeding Arden. He held his Bear Bear up to her and said

"No, no Bear Bear eat it Baby Arden."

I don't know where that came from, but at least he's telling Bear Bear "no," and not "yes!"

Big Brother

Huston has been adapting so well to his role as big brother. He hasn't shown any real signs of jealousy so far and has pretty much just gone with the flow and adapted to Arden's presence in our house. He likes to give us little status updates on her, like "Baby Arden open her eyes!" and "Baby Arden move her feet!" Several times when she's sneezed, he has said "Bless you, Baby Arden" and he frequently peeks over her bassinet and says "Hello, Baby Arden" or reports to us "Baby Arden sleeping her white bed!"
He likes to operate the lights and sounds on her bouncy seat for her and seems to consider this his job any time she's in the bouncer.


Yesterday he made me laugh out loud because he grabbed his "Bear Bear," patted the round part of his belly, and randomly announced to me "Bear Bear have Baby Arden in belly, too!" He was pretty excited to make this connection between mommy's round belly and Bear Bear's round belly. Today when Arden was in her bouncy seat with Huston operating the lights, he yelled in amazement "Baby Arden have fingers, too!" This was quite a revelation, apparently. Maybe because she's always swaddled or in blankets?

I can't wait to see how their little brother/sister relationship develops as they grow older.

The Birth Story

For those interested (and why wouldn’t you be?!), here is the story of Arden’s birth.  Don’t worry – I’ll spare you the gory details and just hit the highlights!

I woke up at 5:30 on Sunday morning with a mild contraction.  Several minutes passed before I felt another mild one, and I briefly considered going back to sleep because it was so early, but thought I should go ahead and start getting ready because I was already 6 days past my due date and knew this was probably the real thing.  I woke Clarke up and told him I thought I was in labor and that I was going to take a shower, and he mumbled, “Oh really?  Okay,” and then went back to sleep.  In the shower I had a few more contractions, but they weren’t terribly strong or close together.  By the time I started fixing my hair and getting my bag together, they were getting stronger and closer together, so I woke Clarke up and told him to start getting ready and to call his mom.  It was shortly after 6 o’clock at this point – maybe 6:15.  As I was packing my bag and getting ready, my contractions were getting stronger and stronger, and much closer together.  By the time Clarke’s mom got to our house around 6:50, I barely had time to catch my breath in between them.  I remember thinking that either labor was much more painful and difficult than I had allowed myself to remember, or I was much closer to delivering than I would have ever expected by that point.

Clarke finished his shower around 7 and I got a wave of nausea about that time that sent me running to the bathroom to be sick.  (Okay, sorry – that’s one gory detail).  We were in the car at 7:10, driving to the hospital which is only about 4 minutes from our house.  I was so grateful that we didn’t live far because by this point I was beginning to feel the need to push, but still trying to tell myself that I couldn’t possibly need to push yet because I hadn’t been in labor long enough.

We parked on the wrong side of the hospital and I got in a wheelchair and let Clarke push me up to labor and delivery because there was no way I was going to make it walking.  We got up to the nurses station and when I told them that I was feeling the urge to push, they all burst into action.  They got me in a gown and into a room and one of the nurses confirmed that I was fully dilated.  (She actually said something else, but writing it would make two gory details and I don’t want to push my luck.)

They kept telling me not to push yet, which was the last thing I wanted to hear.  I heard one of them say to call the doctor and I asked “Is she still at home?” and they said that yes, she was probably at home.  I knew she would never make it in time if she wasn’t already at the hospital.  Praise the Lord that she was!  It seemed like a few seconds later that Dr. Deem was coming in – I think she had just gotten into her office when they called her.  I had never met her before, but she was so incredibly kind (as were all of the nurses) that I instantly felt better.  While she got ready, they told me not to push a few more times and I thought I would die.  Then she broke my water, I pushed through four contractions, during which I could hear Clarke saying “oh my gosh…oh my gosh…oh my gosh” and Arden was born at 7:44 – a mere two hours after my first contraction and hardly more than 3o minutes after we left our house. 

I got to hold her as soon as she was born, which I didn’t get to do with Huston, and Clarke got to cut the umbilical cord.  She scored a 9 and 10 on her Apgar test – a “9” one minute after birth and a “10” 5 minutes after birth, which apparently is very uncommon.  The nurse at the pediatrician’s office said she’s only seen 3 “10’s” in her seven years of working there.  She weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces – exactly the same as Huston – thus confirming my suspicion that she was waiting to be born until she had caught or surpassed him in weight.  She seemed so calm as they cleaned her up and weighed her and she had her eyes open almost immediately, just looking around without crying, surveying this new world she had entered.

View Full Album

We had lots of friends and family come visit us the first day and Huston got to come up to the hospital, too.  He was more interested in pushing the elevator buttons in the hallway than he was in inspecting his new baby sister, but he must have been observing more than we knew because Clarke’s mom told me that later in the day he said, unprompted, “Baby Arden say ‘aaaah’” while flailing his arms around, imitating her crying noise.  He really enjoyed pushing the buttons on my hospital bed when he came up for the second time later in the evening, and drinking from the big straw in my cup. 

There’s lots more I could write about our first week home with Arden, but it’ll have to wait until later.  Stay tuned!