rock climbing gym

A few weeks ago Brad took the girls to a rock climbing gym and they had a great time...

Pneumonia

So, as if wasn't hard enough to recover from having a baby and getting used to a household of 4 kids, I now have pneumonia! Brad had to skip going to Scout camp to stay home and help out. I haven't had pneumonia since I was a kid and although I don't have the fever and chills today with really sharp pains every time I take a deep breath (just slight sharp pain :-P), I am feeling pretty frail and winded. It's weird. I decided to post an entry after I wrote this to my sister, Erin:

"I'm doing alright. I'm on antibiotics and Brad is taking care of everything else :-) I just had a hot dog and tater tots from Sonic for lunch, but at least I didn't have to prepare it :-) And Cora asked me to wash out her shoe just before they left now and as I was telling Brad about it, he said "yeah, she was really worried about this thing in her shoe and I said, 'if you just wait awhile, you'll forget it's there.'" It was a big chunk of caramel. Sigh. But I got it out for her and she happily went off without a hard-not-to-notice sticky substance in her shoe."

It's always interesting to see what happens when the Dad takes over. He does so great, though. For him, the more activities planned and the less food preparation, the better. So they went to Chik-fil-A this morning for breakfast and played in their play area, then to the pool, then Sonic for lunch, and now he just took the girls over to Kelly's for a playdate with Maria and Layla. Later he will take them to the gym while he works out and they play in the gym's kid room. The house is in shambles, but it kind of has been this way since the baby was born. Even with my mom here, we haven't been quite able to keep up with housekeeping, especially with the kids around all day. I just haven't been up to going out too much of course, and my mom can only handle Isabelle and Cora outside the house (for obvious reasons. Brad also took the oldest three to the store yesterday and put Soren in one of those carts with the car in front. Even if you buckle him in, he can get himself out and he remarked how hard it was to catch up to him once he bolted!!! Yes, I said, I should have warned you) But the girls have been to the pool a lot and to the library with my mother in these past few weeks. As well, Isabelle went to a week of musical theater camp, ending with a performance on the last day. It was SO much fun to see her in it. It was the "Sound of Music", and she got to play the part of Gretl. You know, "the sun has gone to bed and so must I...." CUTE. It was just the bare bones of the musical of course, they only had 5 days of 3 1/2 hour rehearsals to do it, but I was quite impressed and she LOVED it.

Wow, give me a few kid-free minutes and a computer, I could really fill up this blog!!! I haven't really been able to write much in this or my journal or even emails to family and friends, so it's good to get something recorded. Usually the first few months of a new child in our family gets forgotten pretty quickly because I'm out of it and I don't write anything down (except with the first baby where you are carefully noting every diaper change, every spit-up, every moment of joy and panic...)

Anyway, it's always something around here, and it seems to be all at once. In addition to having to go to the doctor yesterday, our landlord was here for about 5 hours waiting for an A/C technician to check our our (well, her) system for a second opinion. We'd had the home warranty's people out a total of 4 times since we moved in (May 20) and they finally agreed to replace the condenser, but had some extra costs for her, so she came down to figure things out. I came home from the doctor to her sitting on the couch in our disheveled living room, I felt like crap, the kids were loud and crazy. At least she is quite a pleasant lady and didn't seem uncomfortable there. Although I wonder if she has second thoughts about the decision she mad to let us live here!

Blessing Day - July 4th!

Nana!

Clark cuddling with his Nana


Look at that thumb!! I don't know if he'll keep doing it, he doesn't find his thumb all the time or seem to need it, but it looks so cute when he's got it.

It's been wonderful to have my mother here ("Nana" to the kids) to help out. I'm always in danger of post partum hemorrhage since I've experienced it with all three. If I stand up too often or for too long, I can tell it puts me right back to how I felt right after he was born, so it's a real PAIN to not be able to do everything yet. I went for a walk with Soren and Cora in the stroller on Wednesday, feeling pretty good, but for the next two days I had to take it very easy as the bleeding had picked up as well as perineal pain. It was such an easy birth, why is the recovery so hard?!?! In any case, thank heavens for my mom, who is getting lots of exercise in our house :-)

Clark and his siblings

Clark has found his thumb! (and Cora has found her inner fish) He doesn't always find it, though, so he'll occasionally take a binky (pacifier) too :-)

Soren always asks to hold the baby, but it lasts about 5 seconds and then he says, "heeyaah" (here) and gives him back.

Do they look related? Actually, Clark looks a lot like all of them did as infants, it's fun to look at all of their baby pictures and compare.

Clark Elling Olson

He's here! A little delayed post here, email and facebook got the news first :-)

Clark was born June 15, 2010 at 9:39am. Here's the story, which I wrote on my iPod in the hospital and haven't quite edited but I need to get it down somewhere before time gets more away from me!---

2am I woke up to a contraction. It was pretty strong so I looked at the time and waited to see if another one would come along. 6 minutes later, another one. For about 40 minutes I timed contractions which varied from 3 to 10 minutes apart, so I woke up Brad. We sat up and talked while timing contractions, I also finished packing my hospital bag. After 2 hours of contractions I called Tena, it was about 4am. She came right away and we were off to the hospital. (BTW, the evening before we had just happened to take a dry run drive to the hospital!)

We arrived around 4:30am, by then the contractions had slowed down a bit. In triage the nurse checked me and I was dilated 5cm and completely effaced. Even though my contractions were slowing down I was far enough along they admitted me and I got all hooked up in my room. Around 6:30 they started me on pitocon to keep the contractions going and I was also given an epidural, so I didn't even make it to hard labor before I got the pain relief! So the labor went well, moved along quickly so that I was ready to push by about 9:30am (about ten minutes before I was talking to my mom on the phone to let her know I was in labor but had to get off in the middle of a huge contraction and all the sudden lower pelvic pressure!!) I could feel my contractions, but of course the epidural took away most if the pain. It took all of 5 pushes during 2 contractions to get him out. The doctor and nurse were great. Clark came out just fine and crying right away. I held him right after and he stopped crying almost immediately, but the nurses had to take him away to clean etc. (in the room) and boy did he wail! He was 7 lbs. 13 oz. and 19 3/4 inches long. Not bad for being 9 days early! He was born at 9:39am.

I did not hemorrhage as with the last 2, although they did give me meds just in case, as I did start to bleed more than the norm. Soon after his birth I got very nauseous and dizzy. They gave me some kind of major anti- nausea med (after I barfed!) that made me SO tired and loopy, pretty much for the rest of the day.

It took awhile to settle on a name, but we liked Clark- mostly for its Superman assiciation :-) and it just fit him. Elling is a family name on Brad's side. While the girls were visiting(since Mom isn't here yet, we had Judy and Elisa come down and help out with the kids--also Superwoman Penny in our ward organized to have the RS sisters bring meals for the next week, bless her!) one of the volunteers came in for something and was asking about what names the girls wanted for their new brother. Cora randomly says, "we can't name him Travis because that's my boyfriend's name, but he's not my boyfriend anymore because I don't go to that school anymore..." classic Cora :-)

Bare Belly

A little partial nudity here... But it's so fun to see the big belly before the baby inside shows up in the real world. Here I am 37 weeks/9 months pregnant!!!


I don't really go the pool bare-bellied, I just pulled up the top for the picture! I'm not a real believer in public belly-showing in any form, be it pregnant or flat-tummied :-)