The baby has arrived...finally!

I guess it was meant to be-I gave birth to our little girl on Christmas day. She was the best Christmas present any of us has ever gotten. When I asked Hayden what his favorite present was, he says, "my sister." Her name is Serena Noelle Brandt, born at 6:40 pm. Christmas day. She was 8 lbs., 3.9 oz., 20 3/4 in. long. Both of us are healthy, so we came home from the hospital today. Although there was a knot in her cord. Dr. Mark said it was good she came when she did or there could have been problems.

Christmas morning we all woke up normally and went downstairs to see what Santa had brought. It was around 8:30 am. when we started opening up presents, and when my contractions started. They were getting to be 5 min. apart, and pretty intense, so I tried to hurry the boys along. We finished and my dad came over to take the boys so we could go into the hospital around 10:30. I was dialated to 5 cm. and a week overdue, so they decided to keep me (probably not to the excitment of my doctor, but they didn't induce before!). By 3pm. I needed an epidural and I was dialated to 7 cm.. Dr. Mark broke my water at 4pm., and by 6:30, he told me I could start pushing. After 3 or 4 pushes, she was out. Mike and my mom were in the room with me and we all screamed and cried when Dr. Mark announced it was a girl. I couldn't believe it.

The boys are in love with her (at least right now!). Hayden is of course a big help, and Connor comes over and pets her gently and makes cooing sounds a lot.

I will probably post another entry tomorrow with more pictures. Until then I am going to try and get a little sleep!

Misery

I'm not putting on a happy face anymore. I have reached misery. I am now 5 days late, and the next two days are holidays so the earliest they will induce me is on Weds. night, which means I will then be 8 days late by the time the baby is born. Up to this point I have been doing okay physically (not so much emotionally!), but now the baby is crowding me out and I can't sleep, I can't bend over, I don't want to eat, etc. On top of my problems, the boys have had an exciting weekend as well. We went to a friend's Christmas party on Fri. night and Connor smashed his thumb in a door, losing the nail. Fingernail injuries gross me out. Saturday morning Connor started with diarrhea which he still has, and Hayden woke up this morning with the stomach flu. This is not how I pictured the holiday season this year! Mike has been great. Taking care of the boys and doing things around the house. It's great now that he is done with his masters, he has so much more time. Thanks honey!

Graduation

I'm so proud of Mike. He officially completed his exit interview with the head of the education department on Mon., and yesterday walked the stage in cap, gown and hood to receive his fake diploma. He has completed his Masters program in educational leadership (i.e.principal) and will be looking for a job either this next school year or for 2009.

I wasn't real sure I was going to make it to graduation since it was on my due date, but I'm glad I was able to go. It was a great way to memorialize several years of dedication, sacrifice, late nights, and thousands of dollars!

I will be planning a party to celebrate both his accomplishments and the new baby after the new year, probably sometime mid-January. I'll let everyone know once life settles down a little. Until then we are still waiting (not so patiently) for Baby Brandt.

Gingerbread houses

Hayden really wanted to make gingerbread houses this year and since I'm ready for Christmas and haven't had the baby yet, we decided to buy everything we needed and make them tonight. (Giant's bulk section is great!) Connor had a lot of fun too, so I think we'll make this a tradition each year. It's fun to eat while your working too!

Some thoughts on end of pregnancy

I really can't complain how I feel. There are days when I am done by 5 pm. and Mike has to make dinner, but I think I'm still keeping up pretty well with my responsibilities during the day. I'm still sleeping okay at night, and I don't have trouble with heartburn because I am able to take Nexxium this time. I feel bigger with this one than I did with Connor, probably because I am able to eat desserts this time! I think this baby will be about 8-8 1/2 lbs.. I still don't have any strong feelings about the sex, I just think it's a boy because that's what we make! Mike and my mom think it's a girl. We have about 3 girl names and 5 or 6 boy names we like. (In case you're wondering what those names are, sorry, we don't disclose that until after the baby has a name!)Hopefully it won't take as long to decide this time. Usually by now I am very anxious to get the baby out of me, but this time I am enjoying the last few days I have to feel it inside of me, especially if this is going to be my last one. We've also been so busy getting the rooms ready that I haven't been sitting around just waiting. I'm working on a curtain for the nursery right now. Mike is finishing up his internship this week, so he wants me to hold out till the weekend. That's fine with me. I don't want him to be stressed, and I'll be so glad when he is done. His official graduation is next Weds., I'm not sure who is going to make it!

New Rooms for kids

We love our kids so much we worked our butts off to have rooms redone for them by the time the baby got here. The boys have a large room in the attic for sleep and play, and the baby has a cozy little nursery. The boys love their new room. We moved them in two weeks ago on Dec. 1st. They were running around screaming for hours! We are quite pleased with how it turned out as well. Of course, work is never done, we still have to replace the window, we're just waiting for a friend to come over and help Mike.

This next picture is of our red room before we turned it into the nursery. That room has been many things in the five years we've lived here-family room, computer room, boy's bedroom (temporarily for about 10 months), now the nursery. I was a little sad to see the red go, I still like it, it just wasn't very cutsie.

I'm done painting for a while!

Mike's marathon and other events

It has been quite a while now since I've posted. There have been plenty of things to write about, but I either wasn't in the mood (pregnancy hormones), or because our computer was broken for a while. I will report on our most recent events and get back to other ones later.

I'm not going to post any pictures until it's finished, but we've been spending a lot of time lately on finishing our large attic bedroom for the boys to move into, hopefully this Sat.

This past Sat., Mike ran a marathon in Maryland on the rail trail. He did really well. No qualifying times for Boston yet, but better than his time last year at Baltimore. We saw him at mile 22 and he looked good. He came right when he said he would be there-I was so excited.

This is him running into the finish.

On Monday, Mike and Hayden were off school and Mike and I had scheduled the day to put up chair rail in the attic bedroom. So while we were doing that, Hayden prepared a family home evening lesson. It was about the Christmas story, and he had props for all of us to dress up and act it out. He did such a good job. He had pictures, a book on the Christmas story, and had everything planned out. Mommy was Mary (of course-and a very pregnant one!), Hayden was Joseph, Daddy was an angel, and Connor was a shepherd. It was a great family night.

Then yesterday I had an appt. at the hospital to get the baby turned around because it was breech (it was actually feet first which isn't great for natural childbirth). I really don't want to have a c-section. Thankfully the procedure was successful and short-it was very painful. Two doctors pushed and pulled on my belly, one grabbing the head, the other grabbing the butt. They gave me medicine to stop contractions. Most likely the baby will not turn around again. Other than that I am still doing pretty good, a bit slower and fatter these days. Being at the hospital yesterday got us really excited. Only three weeks left!

CERT trained and Andy's b-day

I went to the church today for the last of my meetings to receive training in CERT-Community Emergency Response Team. After taking a test and going through a scenario, we received a backpack of emergency equipment and a certificate. Mike was very proud of me for going through it. I have to say, it does feel good to accomplish something that doesn't fit into my comfort zone. And I like knowing that if there were an emergency, I can help keep my family safe and do my part to make sure the community is safe. Later tonight we went to the Coy's to surprise Andy for his birthday. Well, he had found out about it through Zane, but he played along. It was a fun night together with friends.

Lost Tooth!

Hayden lost his first tooth today! It has been wiggling for a few weeks, but this morning while he was eating a banana, he noticed some blood. Shortly after breakfast, he calmly cheers, "I got it!" I shouted in excitement and Mike came running down the stairs! It's a milestone in your child's life when they lose their first tooth. I was actually impressed with how calm Hayden was- I thought it would be a tramatic experience for him with the pain and the blood and everything. Of course he has been talking all day about what the tooth fairy is going to leave him tonight. I'm hoping the tooth fairy doesn't forget!

Nixon Park

Both Hayden and Harrison had off school today, so we decided to do something fun. We took the boys to Nixon park for the museum and a hiking adventure. I had never been there before, so Hayden and Connor were thrilled. As you walk in, all the bug displays are on the right and the kids went nuts! After we walked around the museum we went outside on the trail to have a picnic lunch and explore the woods. The kids found some huge sicamore leaves.

Halloween night

We had a great time tonight, adults and kids alike. We went over to the Coats after work to eat dinner together, than take all the kids trick-or treating in their neighborhood. There were lots of families there-McGladries, Ashtons, Markles, Christensens. Hayden had made my pumpkin costume for me this morning without me saying anything to him. He cut out the shapes from a picture and gave them to me in a baggy with tape inside! What a sweetheart, and creative too!

Connor had his routine down for trick-or treating-go up to the house with brother, roar like a lion and hold out his bag, then say thank you in sign language, run down the driveway and on to the next house. Somehow we lost everyone except the Christensens, so we stuck together. We were all tired by the time we were done.

New York trip-Iron Kettle Farm

We had so much fun on our trip to New York this past weekend. One of our favorite things to do is go to Iron Kettle Farm with the family and pick out pumpkins, feed the goats, let the kids play, eat, talk, and take lots of fall pictures. They dress up lots of pumpkins to look like people, we liked this one! Connor had been eating an apple but was getting tired of it, so Hayden took it from him and said,"Say goodbye to your apple Connor!" and put it in the bucket and sent it up to the goats! The goats loved it! We try to get a nice family picture there every year since Steven has a nice camera and enjoys being our photographer. But this is the best we got-kids were not cooporating. But we actually got a great spontaneous one the next day which you will see in our Christmas card! This is most of the Brandt family. Joel, Becca, Hayden, Ang, Connor, Mike, Mom (Susan), Michelle, Allen behind her, Steven, Jen Dolan (long time family friend), and Steven's wife Amy. It's tradition every year that we get a picture here. This year we had so many people we had to be creative. Joel is getting run over by the bus, while Amy and Jen are running behind to catch it! That night at Steven and Amy's house we carved pumpkins and had smores and hot chocolate outside with the chiminia. The next day we walked down to a park to play because the weather was so warm. The boys (large and small)had fun climbing the trees. Steven got some great pictures there.