Claire's First Month

Our precious baby girl is a month old! This time is going by way too fast - although I suppose when you've been as busy as we have in this last month, time does tend to fly.

We took baby Claire to the doctor when she was a week old - she weighed 9 pounds 2 ounces (only an ounce less than when she was born). The doctor was super-impressed with her weight-gaining ability! She just had her 1-month visit yesterday...she now weighs 11 pounds 5 ounces!

As I said, we have been pretty busy over this past month. We went to the lake two out of the last three weekends - and are heading back this weekend for the Fourth. In case you're wondering, we did take baby Claire on the boat. It was a big issue for me, being super-paranoid. Not to worry, they make infant-size life jackets to protect my precious girl.

You probably can't look at this picture without laughing...or maybe feeling sorry for Claire. I assure you she was perfectly safe and comfortable in the life vest, despite what it looks like. She had a grand ol' time, just like my other two girls.

They kept wanting to go to the back of Papa's boat to "watch the bubbles".

In addition to our lake visits, we took the big girls to swim lessons.

They don't look like they were having much fun in this picture - and they weren't. Their attitude improved as the lessons continued, however.

Side note - I have always called Lyla & Natalee "the girls" or "the babes". I can't really do that any longer now that I have a third girl in the mix. I have started calling them "the big girls", but that sounds silly to me for some reason. I have never really called them twins, so saying "the twins" makes me feel weird because it conjures up images of the female anatomy. I could refer to them as L&N, but I'm not sure I'm crazy about that either. If you have a suggestion, offer it up.

Also in the last month, we have had to clean the house numerous times on a moment's notice to make it "showing ready". Apparently all that work has paid off because we have FINALLY received a reasonable offer on our house. It is looking like we might actually get to move in to a MUCH LARGER house by the end of July. My fingers are crossed that everything goes smoothly in the next few weeks. I still don't quite believe this is actually happening.

Not too bad for the first month of my baby girl's life. I'm sure things will be just as busy over the next month, but we shall see.

I leave you with a parting picture of my girl...isn't she just the cutest little thing you've ever seen? Hehe...I love catching funny faces with the camera.

A Baby Story

Just a quick little update about what I have been up to over the last eight days...

For starters, I was introduced to this precious creature:

That's my big girl, Claire Lucille.

Her due date is actually today, June 6th. The doctor decided she should arrive on May 31st. Baby Claire decided she wanted her birthday to be May 29th. I couldn't be more thrilled that I was able to meet her two days earlier than expected.

I woke up Sunday morning for my normal early morning potty visit. Probably TMI, but everything went normally. As I sat back down on my bed, I felt something strange and said something like, "oh!". Darren wanted to know what was up. I informed him that my water had broken. He asked "Are you sure you didn't just wet yourself?" Yes dear, I'm quite sure I didn't wet myself, but thanks for asking. For the following half hour, panic ensued in the Nichols house. He ordered me to take a shower...apparently I smelled or something. He proceeded to make phone calls. We woke up two three-year-olds who probably have not seen 5:30am since they were infants. We started throwing things into a bag...a bag I was going to pack that very day...and went on our merry way to the hospital.

I have been saying throughout this entire pregnancy that I wanted some excitement. When I had the girls, it was a scheduled c-section. Baby Claire was supposed to arrive via scheduled c-section. Somehow I felt jipped out of the fun of labor. Well, I got what I wanted, fo sho.

We arrived at the hospital around 6:30am and were told we would meet our new baby within a couple of hours. I made Darren take one final picture of my belly:

Just for fun, let's take a look at my hospital picture right before I had twins:

Quite the difference eh?!

I told Darren to cut my head off in the top picture. In our rush to get to the hospital, I didn't have time to put on any makeup and wasn't feeling very "glamourous".

My sweet three-year-olds had no idea what was in store for them. All they knew is that they got to wear their new "Big Sister" shirts.

My parents live two hours away so thankfully, Darren's parents were able to get to the hospital in time to take care of these little ones.

Darren also got a new outfit for the special occasion:



As you can see, he's pretty thirlled about it.

Around 8:30am, the nurse wheeled me down the hall to the operating room. I was really nervous. I know that I have gone through this before, but it doesn't get any easier. This time around, I had a weird reaction to the anesthesia at first, which really freaked me out because Darren wasn't in there yet. The docs got me all straightened out and they were ready to begin.

I knew this baby would be big the moment they tried to pull her out of my belly. They couldn't get her out! They had to knock the wind out of me by pressing down as hard as they could at the top of my belly...not one but THREE times. It was awful! Finally she was out and I heard her cry. Then I started to cry. I'm such an emotional basket-case sometimes. In times like these, I think I am allowed to be a bit (ok a lot) emotional though.

It's not fun being strapped to an operating table while other people get to look at and take care of your baby. I so badly wanted to hold her immediately.

They plopped her on the scale...NINE POUNDS, THREE OUNCES! Holy Moly that's a large baby. How on earth did I carry such a big baby? Oh yeah, my first pregnancy totaled 13 pounds of baby...9 pounds is a piece of cake :)

She is perfect and precious and I am so in love. Secretly, I was worried about how I could possibly love another child as much as I love my first two. As soon as I heard that first scream, my worries diminished.

That's about as close as I got to her in the operating room. I just wanted to snatch her out of Darren's hands!

Proud daddy with Baby Claire.



Mommy and Baby Claire...I haven't let go of her very much over the last 8 days.

Big sisters, Lyla & Natalee, are thrilled with their new baby sister.

It doesn't get much better than this.