2 Months

This fussy little girl showed us she can smile this month.  She loves kicking her feet, taking a bath and snuggling.  Oh, and eating. Big girl is in the 90% for her age.
She's not a fan or flying or dairy. I figured out that all the dairy I was eating was hurting her belly. She has been so much happier since I took one for the team and cut out my Bops and Sonic trips.

1st day of school

1st church service. 

Going on walks was one of the few ways I could get this little girl to nap.

I forgot about the straight jacket swaddle blanket.  I pulled this thing out and remembered how wonderful it is for sleeping.

Luke LOVES holding his baby sister. She's started noticing him a little more too.

These smiles make those fussy days worth it.

This is how we survived the airport.

All dressed up for Uncle Jeff's wedding

swimming in NJ was cold

Not a fan of getting her nails done

Luke wasn't a fan of the kilt

1st airplane ride

Livi and Ramsey's 1st playdate

3 months

Livi has become much happier.  Not only is she smiling more, she is starting to coo and laugh some too.

Go Gold Friday

Rutgers football with Daddy

Luke loves her so much

We like football in this house. Livi dresses accordingly.

I love this school picture of them

Livi's first month

Yay we made it 1 month

I hope he always loves her as much as he does now

Celebrating Steve's birthday.  Livi stayed inside to eat about 90% of the party.

Of course she game out for cake and snuggles with dad.

Just one of the beautiful new born pictures Livi took

This face pretty much sums up how she felt about life for her 1st few months here.

Nursing has been a bit different this time around

Luke loves Livi.  From the moment he met her he has wanted to be so involved with everything about her.  Everyday he says, "Awe, dat baby is sooo cute.  I lub dat baby."

This is a rare sleeping moment I was able to capture.  And of course she is so angelic, I just want to pick her up and cuddle.

Never would I have thought I would like bows and pink so much. 

An apology to Livi

Dear Livi,

I'm sorry that one day when you are looking back at all the documentation of every new thing your brother did that we don't have the same for you.  It's just one of the hardships that comes along with being the 2nd child.  You can blame it on your brother who is keeping us on our toes because he wants to climb everything and throws a tantrum just because his bananas are "dirty."  Or you can take the blame for yourself since you did not come into this world with an appreciation for sleep.  But I would like to say the reason I have not kept up is because I prefer to spend all of my time experiencing and doting over you rather than typing about it.  Either way, I want you to have these documents and I want to look back and remember everything about this precious time. (I'll leave out most of the negatives like the day you screamed for 8 hours straight.)  So, I'm going to try to do a quick catch up over the next few days about the last few months.
Also, I'm sorry about the confusion of the spelling of your name.  I looked at your full name one day and decided if we were going to shorten it to "Livi", it should be spelled the way it is in "Olivia."  I'm the mom and I'm allowed to make those decisions.

Love,
Mom

Livy is here

July 1, 2015 at 1:41pm, we welcomed Olivia Frances Ryder to our family.

Tuesday afternoon (June 30th) I new she was coming either that night or the next day.  My contractions were getting closer and stronger throughout the day.  I tried to get everything settles at work because in the back of my head I knew I wasn't coming back the next day.  I did make it to a work party that evening where I felt my contractions getting even stronger. I was also making bets that she would be here sooner than later - I won.

By about 10pm that evening my contractions were pretty regular and strong enough to keep me from sleeping.  I called my mom so she would be prepared to come up.  I also got Susan to come stay at our house to watch Luke since I would probably be going in during the middle of the night.  Since I didn't go into labor with Luke, I didn't really know what to expect and was nervous about waiting too long.  We went to the hospital around midnight where much to my dismay, I was only 2.5cm dilated. They did keep me because my contractions were regular and I was slowly progressing (3cm about an hour later). 
After a restless night of no sleep, lots of walking and very little progression, I sent my mom to our house to get some rest and Steve to work to see a few patients.  At 8am I was stuck at 4.5cm.  The contractions got a lot stronger and much closer together.  By about 11:30 when I was only 5cm I knew I couldn't endure the pain for 5 more cm. so I asked for my epidural.
After I got the epidural about an hour later, they checked me and I was close to 6cm.  I finally could rest without the pain.  Steve was starving so I told him to go ahead and get some lunch since nothing seems to be happening to quickly.  Around 1:30 the nurse came in to check me and said I was about 6.5 but could stretch me to 7cm.  A few minutes later (seriously, less than 5) the doctor came in to tell me her heart rate was dropping which meant either she was ready to be born or that her umbilical cord was being compressed.  Since I was just checked and was only about 7cm, they wanted to put a cord in me to relieve the pressure from the umbilical cord since that seemed to be the case.
As soon as he went to insert the cord, I saw the Dr.'s eyes get big.  He looked at me and said, nope, she's here.  You're going to push on your next contraction.  Steve was still at Taco Bell.  I made my mom call him as the Dr. called in for the equipment.  Fortunately, Steve had just gotten back and walked in the door with the nurses.  At 1:38 (I remember looking at the big clock on the wall) I started pushing.  Two pushes later, our beautiful daughter was born. 20.5 in, 7lb 2oz and she looked just like Luke when he was born.  The next day, we finally decided to name her Olivia "Livi" Frances Ryder.

While I stayed up laboring...

39 weeks

We are so close to meeting our baby girl.  At this point we're just waiting until she is born to name her which means no cute monogrammed clothes to bring her home in but I think we'll survive it.
We're still not 100% prepared but can you ever be? Luke still thinks my belly button is the baby. He's probably the least prepared. Mostly all we have left to do are minor nursery details and getting baby gear that we won't even need in the beginning such as bottles.  I'll just keep drinking my rootbeer floats (one of my cravings throughout this pregnancy) and do what I can when I can.
The greatest blessing so far is that my ankle/foot has healed almost to full function.  Last Thursday Dr. Barbierre even gave me the go ahead to run.  I kind of looked at him like he was crazy since I'm carting this extra 30lbs on me .  Turns out, I was the crazy one since I could hardley wait to test my new ankle out that evening.  We went on one of two more runs as a family of 3 that afternoon.

We also celebrated Steve on Father's day.  I was hoping that she would be born on this day since it was also my mom's birthday.  However, I'd rather her stay in and be as healthy as possible when she gets here.  So, Steve only had 1 child to wake him up this Sunday morning.