Welcome to the Jungle Axl Gregory- Sean

       Axl Gregory- Sean was born March 17th, 2013 at 6pm. He was 7 pounds 6 ounces and 19 inches long. The best thing about him being born on St. Patrick's day....my grandfather John, who moved to America from Ireland when he was 22years old, died on February 20th of this year. Throughout my pregnancy he kept telling that I should have him on St. Patrick's day, so I am pretty excited that he was. Sort of feels like he was there.
       Axl is named after to of the most amazing men I have ever met in my life (no I have not met Axl Rose, I was talking about his middle names) :). Gregory is after Glenn's brother Greg Rolfe, who died on February 26th, 2010 from complications of leukemia. Sean is after my grandfather John, who changed his name from Sean to John when he immigrated to America.

        Having a boy is WEIRD! Glenn and I both thought that he was going to be a boy when I was pregnant, however when we saw the ultrasound and it was confirmed that he was in fact NOT a girl, and trust me he was flaunting that he was a boy :) On the ride home Glenn and I were both in shock, I remember saying "oh God, he is going to do all the gross things that teenage boys do!" and "I don't know how to teach a boy to pee" and then the one thing that all parents of boys have to deal with "omg we are going to have to decide if we are going to circumcise or not". 

    Lucky for us Axl, hasn't peed a lot when we have been changing him, at least on me. The firs time he peed, Glenn was changing him, I heard him (glenn yell), I said "is he peeing"; "yep on his own face!"; "what did you do", Glenn replied "I threw a wippie on his face"!!!! And then there was the time where Glenn got up with him and fed him out of a bottle (which Axl does not prefer), and Axl wasn't eating very so Glenn got me up. After sitting o the couch for a minute I said "why is my shirt wet?" a half awake Glenn replied "oh oops I forgot to tell you he peed on the couch"!!!

     But perhaps one of the coolest things for Axl, aside from having the coolest and CRAZIEST sisters, is that he is only 2 months younger than my nephew! Hayley and I always said while growing up that we wanted to have children close in age, Ramona and Aurora are a year apart, and now the boys are only 8 weeks apart. And its an exact 8 weeks! Zander was born January 17th, 2013 and Axl on March 17.

      We aren't sure what Axl is going to be like yet. But what we do know, and anyone who has met him and can tell you, he is a TALKER! He is a happy boy, and a tough boy (I will share some stories later). He loves being outside, when all else fails at this home, and he gets fussy, we baby burrito him (swaddle) grab his pacifier and his blanket (a handmade blanket from Nana and Papa that he can not sleep without) and we head outside and walk around the court yard until he falls asleep. We are excited to have him, more excited to get to know him while he grows and with a name like Axl, we can only expect a little more craziness in our house!!!!

Then Came Ramona

      Ramona Alabama- Grace was born December 26th 2009 at 9:51am. She was 5 days late, and has been leaving her mark on everything since then! Unlike Ruby, Ramona was not a small baby, she weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces, and was an insane 21 1/2 inches long (look in this picture her legs go on forever!). And other than some trouble with learning how to latch, which stopped any hopes of breastfeeding, it took her 3 weeks to learn to latch to a bottle, she has been the easiest baby. Eating well, barely throwing up at all, and sleeping great. I am not sure if its because I had Ruby, but I remember more of my pregnancy with Ramona than I do with Ruby. One of my favorite memories is that Ramona was always so responsive to Ruby. When Ruby was happy and laughing, Ramona would move around like crazy, or when Ruby was upset and crying she would move around like crazy! I always tell them that no matter what happens to them when they are adults, they were meant to be together.

       Ramona was quickly nicknamed Moni (Moan-ie), because I hate the nickname Mona. She is completely the opposite of Ruby! Which as a first time parent of multiple children, I was completely amazed and in awe of the fact that Glenn and I could make a person that not only didn't have the same characteristics as Ruby, but she doesn't look like Ruby either. Ramona has blue eyes, and curly/ wavy hair. Ramona is loving, caring, hilarious, flies by the seat of her pants and is all meanings of the phrase a "bull in a china closet". She couldn't be delicate if she tried. But those are all just some of the reasons she is so loved.

Some of Moni's sillies:
*She says Zusic instead of Music- which I love and it makes me sad that when she goes to school they are going to make her talk like everyone else.

*Other than the occassional chicken nugget, she has never eaten meat (her own choice).

*She once spit in her hand and rubbed in her hands telling me "Mama its hand sanitizer" (so gross)!!

*Ruby asked her one time if she was going to have a boyfriend when she grows up Moni said "yep and hims gonna be a jerk" LOL!

*She wants me to lay with her every night before she goes to bed, and will only fall asleep after singing you are my sunshine, and the ABC's.

*When she was little and would fall on the ground she would automatically put her hands up and wouldn't get up on her own because she didn't want to get her hand dirty.

*She painted her fingernails on her bed by herself because she is "a big siser"......

Life with Ramona is crazy, and non-stop, but we wouldn't have it or her any other way!


     

Along Came Ruby

Ruby Elizabeth- Marie was born January 12, 2007. I couldn't find a baby picture of her own my face book account, so I just took one of my favorites of her. Ruby has been an adventure from the start! I had never intended to have children until after graduating college, but that didn't happen. I had always planned that my pregnancy would be complication free, that didn't happen. I had always planned to spontaneously go into labor and not need any medications, but that didn't happen. I had always planned to have a happy and healthy baby grow into a happy and health person, this has happened but only after a life threatening event at almost 5 months old.

My pregnancy with Ruby was going wonderfully, I was gaining weight normally, she never liked when the midwives would check her heartbeat with the doppler. However my my 38 week appointment they noticed that my belly hadn't grown in the last couple of weeks. I was sent for an ultrasound, which found that not only was my fluid low, but that I had been leaking fluid since around 32 weeks and Ruby had completely stopped growing at 35 weeks. I was put on bedrest for a wee and sent for another ultrasound at 39 weeks. My midwives were hoping for an increase in fluid, however this didn't happen, at the last u/s (ultrasound), my little Ruby had only one tiny pocket of fluid with her. I was rushed to the hospital, and monitored for 24 hours before being induced with pitocin. My labor was quick and painful, so I elected to have an epidural. Ruby was born at 3:17pm weighing 5 pounds 5 oz and was 18 3/4 inches long. After she was born she was placed in an incubator because she wasn't doing a great job maintaining her body heat, and I apparently do not respond well to anesthesia because my blood pressure dropped and I was vomiting every where. The nurse said "I will give you this fenigan and it will take the nausea away", LOL, I passed out for 6 hours!

We brought our tiny Ruby home, not feeling ready to take care of a baby. However we weren't home for very long, at 5 weeks old she was admitted into the hospital because she had caught a cold. It was while she was able the hospital that she began spitting up her feedings, alot. The doctor and nurses were not concerned stating that it was due to the mucus from her cold. We were discharged after two nights, however after returning home an the cold going away Ruby continued to throw up her feedings. Our lives had become a continuation of making bottles, cleaning up vomit cycle. But there was something different about her vomiting that didn't sit right with us. Ruby was projectile vomiting after every feeding, we would wake up in the morning and find that she was covered in vomit, and I remember this in particular, I walked into her room while Glenn was changing her and she vomited out OVER the side of her changing table. We met with the dr's and told them our concerns, and were simply told that "she is just a small girl" and "your over feeding her", so at 4.5 months we were feeding her only 2 oz every 2 hours that she was still throwing up. Finally after moving to Augusta, she had a really bad day, she was very lethargic, and I remember telling my sister "her skin is so dry I keep putting lotion on her but it isn't doing anything", I called a new Dr's office, they stated that couldn't see her until our insurance switched her in June (it was May 23). I became very upset and told them that she was loosing weight (she had been weighed at her previous dr's and then at WIC and had lost weight), the new Dr. saw us right away. At 4.5 months my little Ruby weighed 9.0 pounds, she was still wearing newborn diapers and clothes, something was wrong. She was admitted into the hospital that night and transported to Maine Medical Center the next morning for testing. Based on her age, and that she was a girl the on call surgeon stated that he thought she had " severe acid reflux but we are going to do a barium swallow anyway". The barium swallow was done on May 24, and should that Ruby had pyloricstenosis (a closing of the stomach muscle that wasn't allowing food into her body), we were able to see the barium go into her stomach and come right back out. Ruby had surgery on May 25th 2007, we were told that if we had waited another couple of days she would had died. My little baby had been starving for months, now I was worried about how this was going to affect her development. Luckily she gained weight quickly following surgery, and developed quickly as well talking at 9 months, walking at 11 months, simple sentences at 14 months and she hasn't slowed down since. We always tell her that she is the reason we had more babies. We say "Ruby you are so awesome and smart and we love you so much that we wanted to have more babies".

It all started in 6 days!

All that you see in this picture was started after only 6 days! Honestly. I met my husband at the airport in New Hampshire, after my sister made me accompany her to pick him up for her wedding. (she was marrying his older brother). Glenn and I met on July 19th, and were married on July 25th 2005 (yep that is almost 8 years ago). I wish that I had pictures to post, but we literally have only 8 photos total and I don't know where any are. Things haven't been easy, granted when we married neither of us were living in the same state, he was living in Denver Colorado, and I was living in Oswego New York. So we moved to Maine, in with his mother and step father and started finding jobs and saving money. (I should note out of respect for the other people involved, our decision to get married while it was the right decision for us did hurt other people, whom we have both made amends with). 

So what's it like living with someone and you know nothing about them? Well we always joked that we had the blessing of not having had time to try to impress each other, you know how you always hear about people who date and build up these images or idea of what the other person is like and then they get married and find out that they are not like that, well we had no choice other than to just be us from the get go. And to be honest it is a completely CRAZY to marry someone after knowing them for only 6 days, and I don't honestly think that we loved each other, or were committed to each other until after having been married for 7 months or so. After a really bad fight thing we talked all night, and not just about how things were going but talked about how we talk, about what we heard the other person say and what we felt. I got to use a lesson I learned from my ex's mother, who learned it from her older brother "how do I know what you are thinking, if you don't tell me". It was that night, that we truly decided that we didn't want to live without each other, that we were going to support each other through anything, in chasing and reaching our dreams, in one day having children, that we were going to take time tho cherish each other every day, and that we were going to love each other for the rest of our lives. So almost 8 years later, I can honestly say my heart still skips a beat when I hear him come home from work, I cherish every moment I get to spend with him, even on our "busy" nights when he has his computer and I have mine and we are simply sitting side by side with our legs touching while we work. It may have all started in 6 days, but we are in it for a lifetime.