She's Here!

Megan wakes me up around 3AM telling me she's been having regular contractions for a couple of hours now.  Remember, this is about 2 weeks before her due date (9/16).  We lay in bed until around 5AM using her iPhone app to record the frequency and duration of the contractions.  Finally, after much debating, we decide it's time to go to the hospital.  I give my mom an early wakeup call to come over so that Stella can sleep and then go back to their house.  After mom got to our house around 5:30AM, we went to the hospital where we played the "admitted or go home" game.  I managed to capture Megan's enthusiasm for this quite well (picture on the right).  We were there for at least 2 hours until they decided that we would be admitted and we were going to have this baby!

Megan was given an epidural (one of her first requests), but there was a complication with the execution of said epidural.  The anesthesiologist made a mistake where too much spinal fluid would be slowly leaking out and would almost definitely cause her to have a spinal headache.  While most people see the anesthesiologist once or twice, she became our best friend checking in very regularly to see if there is any way she could make Megan more comfortable.  They gave her additional drugs to combat the headache and suggested to lay as flat as possible.  Sure enough, within a few hours, Megan started to have neck and headache pain (which we go on for about another day).

Besides the spinal headache snag, everything else went pretty smooth and we were blessed with Charlotte Jane (Charley)'s entrance into the world at 5:28PM.  She weighed 8lbs 10oz and was 20.5" long.

Later that evening, my parents brought Stella up to the hospital and she got to finally meet her little sister (something we were all really excited about).

She was so proud and happy!  I meant to take more video, but I did manage to capture when they first saw each other and Stella proclaimed her as "my baby":

Big Bass

Stella and I go fishing at our local neighborhood pond about once a week.  We usually get some bites but lately they haven't been turning into a catch.  However, today, Stella's first ever fish was a monster bass! I had to reel it in, but she hooked it!

I explained to her that the fish was a large mouth bass.  So, when we came home, she proudly explained to her mom that the fish she caught "had a big mouth"!

I Never!

So, Stella's new thing when she disapproves of something is to say "Never!" or "I Never!".  We don't know where she picked this up, but it's definitely a regular part of her vocabulary now.  If you don't believe me, check out the video:

Charlotte's Nursery

For Charlotte's nursery, we went with a similar style as Stella's as far as a light base color all around and darker stripes on the wall with the window as well as the bathroom.  However, for Charley, we went with a purple theme (whereas Stella's room is pink):

 

Megan found some cute owl based artwork that she framed and put on the walls (Grandma Peters financed this):

For furniture, we couldn't find a crib in the Wichita area we liked, so my Dad and I ended up picking up her crib and chest of drawers from Buy Buy Baby in Oklahoma (we saw the crib/chest we liked when recently visiting a Buy Buy Baby in KC).  We also "stole" the rocking chair, ottoman, and changing table from Stella's room (we have a new chair for Stella on order which Grammy financed):

Big Top Stella

Today, Stella and I went to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Super Circus Heroes.  It was a good show and the elephants were Stella and I's favorite.  Another highlight was a little dog that rode on top of a bigger dog that was riding on top of a horse!

Of course, as I learned at the recent baseball game we went to, Stella had to get her popcorn fix (this is the first of two tubs we shared):

First Glimpse of Little Sister

We decided it would be cool to take Stella out of school early, so that she could check out her little sister during the sonogram we had scheduled today.  It's hard to describe her reaction, but it really warmed our hearts.  She was so excited, proud, and amazed by the live sonogram of her baby sister!

Stella's feedback from the video was that the baby was wearing glasses and had teeth!  We got a big kick out of this.  Here's a profile pic from this sonogram session where you can kind of tell where she was getting this impression from due to the hollowed out looking eyes and would kind of looks like teeth in the jaw area:

Also, as Megan suspected, the sonographer said that she could see hair (which she indicated is rare to be able to tell in a sonogram):

Whatever She's Got

David Nail's Whatever She's Got came on the jukebox today at Timbuktu and we were treated to the following: