Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

As if things last year weren't stressful enough, or maybe because they were too stressful in many ways, we are undergoing some big changes in our family. All is for the best I think, and we're not sure what will be in store for us down the road, but for now the girls seem to be adjusting well to their new surroundings. Lydia started at a new school, and although we see some regression in her school performance, she is happy to be at the same school as her best buddy, Emma. She has also made a new best friend named Riley who was born on the exact same day as Lydia. Both girls are quite excited to have a birthday in common with someone they like so much and I am very happy that Lydia is making new friends, and maintaining old ones at her new school. Lydia is growing out of control, and at 6 years old she can wear a ladies size six shoe. If she keeps up this pace, we'll need a custom shoe maker by the time she reaches middle school! She is a beautiful girl with a beautiful smile and exuberance that is hard to contain.

Nadia, now 8 months old, is becoming quite mobile, pulling up on everything, and while she doesn't officially crawl, she is very close, and chooses to scoot and roll around to reach anything she wants to check out. She loves to clap on demand, and is learning to wave, but sometimes gets the two confused. Or perhaps she's not confused at all, but just thinks clapping is more fun than waving, so she claps when we say clap, and she claps when we say wave. :) She continues to be a blessing in our lives with her lovely smile and cheerful giggles, sweet baby toes, and slobbery kisses. She is sporting some new blondish hair after losing all but about 12 strands of the dark reddish brown hair she was born with. I think outdoor play in the spring will reveal a lighter shade of blond much like her daddy's hair.

Both girls are looking forward to our beach vacation coming up in a few months. Lydia can't wait to meet up with her cousins and Nadia is anxious to see what all the fuss is about! :) I think good things are in store for our climbing little Hills this spring!

So now for an update on our little Hill girls...

Nadia is now over 4 months old. She is indeed a blessing in our life. Never have I known such a happy baby. She smiles always, and is simply a pleasure at all times. She has earned the nickname Sugar Booger, as that always made her smile when I said it, so it stuck. She may not care for it when she gets older, but for now we are all happy to call her our little Sugar Booger.

Nadia has come a long way from that quiet, sleepy, peaceful little baby she was a few months ago. She is very active now, very close to sitting up on her own, and she can roll over from her tummy to her back. While on her back, she can roll to her side, but she doesn't like to be on her tummy, so I don't think she is ready to put herself in that position just yet. :) Nadia's first two teeth popped through a few days before her 4 month birthday. With the amount of drool she is still producing, I'm thinking it won't be long before she has a few more. We all love to hear her jabber and squeal, and as always, we are all so happy to have her in our lives.


Lydia is in first grade now. She is loving her teacher, although just like last year, she is having a little trouble focusing. She is reading well above her grade level, and I think she just gets bored. Her grades are great, but she tends to drift off into her own little world and not really pay attention to what is being asked of her. Regardless, her teacher seems to like her and is very patient with Lydia.

This has been an emotional year for Lydia. At the same time I was bringing home the new baby, our dog, Cinnamon, was having a litter of puppies of her own. Lydia desperately wanted to keep them, but we have too many dogs already, and we were able to find a home for all 7 puppies. Lydia was devastated, so in order to help ease her misery, I got her a sweet little bunny. Lydia named her Cutie Queen Tasha Hill. (Yes, that's Cutie Q.T. Hill). Although Lydia loved her little bunny, she didn't remember to give her water, and after only a few weeks, Cutie passed on. Earlier in the year, Lydia's mouse Storm had also died, so this was not taken well. However, Lydia agreed at this time that she is not good at caring for pets, so we should really not get any more for a while. And to make matters worse, our two cats have now gone missing. At least we don't know where they are, rather than knowing that they died. I don't think she will handle it well if we find out for sure if that is what happened. I'm a little concerned about coyotes and foxes myself, but I won't mention that to Lydia. We're just hoping that some nice family decided to take them in and they are enjoying a new home.

So, that is a quick update on our precious Lydibug and Sugar Booger. :) I hope to keep up with the blog better from now on, but for constant updates and photos, please check out my Facebook page.

A little more than 4 months ago, we were blessed with the birth of our second daughter, Nadia Neoma Rose Hill. She was delivered by a scheduled c-section, with a waiting room full of family and a very anxious big sister, and everything went perfectly. I will never forget the moment she was born... Elliot had been very calm and collected watching as the doctor did his thing, then all of a sudden, he gets tears in his eyes and says "I can see her feet!" At that point, my tears began to flow as I waited for my chance to see my new little girl as she was lifted from behind the blue surgical sheet. I don't think you can ever get used to that moment, no matter how many children you might have. She was perfect, at 8 pounds 5 ounces, and 21 inches long. After the nurses cleaned her up a little, they handed her to Elliot, and he brought her down to my face where I could see her up close. I was in love instantly. The memories came back to the moment over 6 years ago when I was in this same situation, only I was meeting my precious Lydibug for the first time. How lucky am I to have two such beautiful baby girls? Very lucky indeed.

Almost there!!!

Here we are now in week 38 of pregnancy... we're almost to the end! And I personally, am so grateful... I've had heartburn every day for the last 6 months, and I am so ready to eat Mexican food and pizza again! Only 11 more days, if not sooner, and we'll have our new daughter! I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in so long... but here's a little catch up. I'm huge, but I don't think I'm as big as I was with Lydia. Nadia is still retaining fluid in her kidney, so we will have to wait until she is born to follow up on that, and if it is still there, she may require surgery to reroute the drainage tube from her kidney to her bladder. I hope it clears on it's own after she is born, but if not, the doctor assures me that it is not a major surgery and everything will be fine. According to the latest ultrasound a few weeks ago, she is going to be another big girl. They estimated her weight to be about 6 pounds at that time, and considering the expected 1/2 pound per week weight gain she should be adding, that would put her close to 7/12 pounds already, and we can expect another pound (at least) before delivery. I'm curious to see if their measurements are accurate.

And as if she's not being enough of a trouble maker with her kidneys, she is also breech. Or, at least she is flopping back and forth so we can't tell what direction she is facing from one day to the next. We went through an external variation procedure last week to turn her back the right way, and later that day she decided she didn't like standing on her head, so she turned back around on her own. As of now, we are planning a C-section on June 10th, but if I go into labor on my own first, we'll check and see if she is still breech. If so, it will be a C-section, if not, we'll try the old fashioned way. :)

So here are some pics of the last ultrasound, and my big belly... enjoy!

Nadia

Here we are in week 23 of pregnancy. This little girl is a kicker! She moves around all day every day. Last night, Lydia was in bed with me, and I woke up in the middle of the night to find Lydia's leg stretched across my belly. I carefully moved the heavy appendage off of me and rolled over. The baby seemed to thank me with a few back hand springs. She likes to have room to move. This might get tricky as she gets bigger and the living space becomes more and more crowded.

I've found it interesting how much I don't like to eat this time around. I seem to remember swearing off Taco Bell while I was pregnant with Lydia, but this time my list of dislikes is extensive. Just about any meat gives me a queasy feeling, and sometimes the only thing I want to eat is Fruit Loops. I try to make myself eat other healthy foods. For instance, I had a nice salad for lunch today, so I'm trying to gain my protein by drinking lots of milk in lieu of eating meat. Steak always seems to agree with me, though.
On that note, some things I am craving during this pregnancy are...
*Chocolate Malt
*Watermelon Slushies
*Rainbow Sherbet (although I learned I do not like the Life Savers kind- just standard Lime/Orange/Raspberry)
*Peppercorn Ranch dressing for salads
*Fruit Loops (without which I wouldn't eat anything for breakfast)
*V-8... I could drink a gallon every day - although I try to stick with just one or 2 small cans because they will inevitably give me heartburn if I drink too much.
*Steak with A-1, baked potatoes, and salad is my dinner of choice right now. But if there is even a small piece of fat on the steak I will likely be ill...
*Strawberries
*Oranges
*Bananas

And some of the things that I usually eat but can't stand the thought of...
*Eggs (trying not to gag as I type the word...)
*Spaghetti sauce - I'm eating my spaghetti with butter and salt instead. Boring, but it works.
*Hamburger - yuck.
*Hot dogs - really yuck
*Chicken nuggets - really really yuck
*Anything spicy- sometimes I want it, but I will regret it at night as I down a bottle of Tums.

I am truly ready for winter to be over as I feel the need to get out and move, with my energy levels increasing steadily, but the cold is paralyzing for me. I can't stand the cold. I didn't let that stop me from going sledding a few weeks ago, however. Against my mother's and husband's wishes, I decided if I was careful, there was no reason not to sled with Lydia, so we had a good time. The only problem with that was the climbing. I was too exhausted to make it back up the hill too many times, but at least I didn't totally miss out on it. So daddy took over from there and I stood, watched, and caught my breath the rest of the time.

And as for her name... we still have time to change our minds, but we may have already settled on a name for our new little girl. It was really funny how we came to Lydia's name. After exhausting every name in the baby book because one of us had a problem with it for one reason or another, we both agreed that we liked the name Lydia a couple months before she was born. However, we could not come to an agreement on her middle name. I really liked the sound of Lydia Grace, and Elliot loved the name Lydia Wenona (Wenona is Sioux for 'first born daughter'). She was about 3 days old, and neither of us would give in, so we decided to go with both, a compromise that we now love. So our little Lydia Wenona Grace Hill seemed to open up a new possibility of names for the new baby. This time, I had the idea to use family names for her middle names, and they would have a similar 'flow' to them as Lydia's middle names. My grandmother's name was Fern Neoma, and of course the Hill family has passed down the name Rose for a while now, a variation of Elliot's grandmother's name. So we thought Neoma Rose would make a nice middle name. We were still shooting down all the first names we thought of, until one day we were sitting around watching 24. One character from season 6 was named Nadia. I looked at Elliot and said, "that's a nice name. what do you think about Nadia?" He said, "Yeah, I like Nadia." And so, as of now, we are planning to name the baby Nadia Neoma Rose Hill. Nadia is a Russian name that means 'hope'. What a nice meaning, and although it's a mouthful, and we run the risk of making people think that we are really big Judds fans... who can't spell... I think we may have a winner. Stay tuned to find out if we have a change of heart before June. :)

Ultrasound, Jauary 14, 2009

As I mentioned in my previous post, we went for an ultrasound yesterday. Luckily, this baby was more cooperative than Lydia was at this stage and let us see that SHE was in fact a GIRL. So I am so happy to know that Lydia's wish to share a room with the new baby is going to work out for as long as she wants (I'm sure it won't last long). I am also happy that I can use all of Lydia's baby clothes that I've saved once again. While Elliot is a bit overwhelmed with the idea of yet another female to live with (even all the pets are female now that Elyssa has Cosmo back... and I'm talking about 3 dogs, 2 cats, and even the mouse), I think he's getting used to the idea. ;) Maybe some of the fish are boys???

Here are a few of the ultrasound pictures we came home with yesterday...

January Update

I hope everyone had a great holiday season. We certainly enjoyed ours... Lydia was so much fun, and we were able to see most of the family for Christmas, so that was great. Lydia is enjoying her last year of being an only child, and she was very happy with Santa this year. Of course it helps that she is very gullable and believed all of my excuses why Santa would not be bringing her the extremely expensive gifts that she wanted. She was happy to revise her list, and was lucky to have gotten lots of new things for the price of one of the items she originally wanted.

Now that the holidays are behind us, I'm trying to focus on 2 things. School and the new baby. Ok, 4 things, add the kitchen remodeling and as always, our number 1 priority, Miss Lydia.

The anticipation is building as we await the ultrasound tomorrow morning. Will this baby be more cooperative than his/her big sister and let us have a peek? Will we actually be able to start calling this baby "he" or "she" rather than "it"? We'll find out tomorrow. If we are able to tell if we're having a boy or a girl, then we can start making other plans such as whether or not "she" can share a room with Lydia (this is what Lydia is hoping for) or will "he" need a room of his own. Which color stroller should we buy? The pink and gray, or the blue? And I don't even want to think about names. It will help to narrow things down by half before we start any serious thinking on that issue. So tomorrow - I hope - we will be able to answer some of those questions.

I started school again yesterday, and I'm happy to report that this should be an easy and stress free... or at least reduced stress... semester. I'm taking Abnormal Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Professional Ethics. Not a heavy work load, and it doesn't look like there is any homework in my Abnormal Psych class, just 3 tests, so that will be nice!

Lydia got her first Kindergarten report card last week. She's doing great in school. She has mastered all of the skills she needs to master, but aparently she has trouble listening and paying attention in class. They're telling me that she is bored easily, and needs a challenge. She doesn't always follow directions as she should, and she doesn't try her best because she would rather be silly than take her schoolwork seriously. I'm having a hard time believing this of my sweet perfect little angel! (Just kidding here... the teacher's assessment of Lydia is exactly the same as my own. Very bright, but often off in a world of her own.) The next half of this year will be interesting as I can no longer spell words that I don't want her to hear... now she knows what I'm spelling. She is always influenced by the older kids in the neighborhood, and therefore she tends to think anything to do with body parts or bodily functions is absolutely hilarious, and she thinks EVERYONE agrees with her. The poor computer repair man and the girl making our sandwiches at Subway this week are just 2 examples of the people she thinks need to hear every random silly and gross thought that pops into her head. When she decides to start unleashing this humor on her teachers... well, lets just say that I'm prepping myself for the calls from the teacher, or principal, that will inevitably follow. That being said, she keeps us laughing every day. For Lydia, laughter is the best medicine, and she loves to make people smile. I tend to think of her as a 5 year old Jim Carrey... very funny... but often inappropriate.

Lydia made a decision at the right moment last week... she decided she did want her ears pierced afterall, and she caught Mommy and Daddy in the right mood to let her do it. Of course the actual piercing took her off guard. She started backing out at the last minute, so we had to trick her into sitting still so the girls could "measure" her ears, then they silently counted to 3 together and pierced- she was not expecting it, and she cried for about 2 minutes... just until she saw her pretty new earrings in the mirror. Then a big smile spread across her face and she was fine. She's very proud of her newly pierced ears. And as you can see, she's also losing teeth faster than ever - I think she's lost 5 teeth over the last 5 months. She has 3 more loose ones now that I'm expecting to fall out within the next month or two. But the new ones are growing in quickly so she's not COMPLETELY toothless.

Hopefully soon we'll have pictures of our new kitchen floor, but I'll spare you the demolition stage that we're in now... it's not so pretty, but hopefully it will look really nice when we're done.

I hope everyone has a great year in 2009!

D Day: June 15, 2009

Ok- we have an official due date... and this is the result of an early ultrasound, so it should be pretty darn accurate. We're set for June 15, 2009 for our new family member to make his/her debut. Of course, Lydia was really late, so I'm hoping that's not the case this time. I'll do everything I can to make Nana's hopes for a June baby come true. :)

Also, Amy & Emily talked me into going ahead and posting the 3D stages of pregnancy widget. It's still a little freaky looking right now, with the tail and all, but at least it has eyes and little arms and legs starting to pop out, so it's starting to look a little more human, and a little less like an amphibian. :) Lydia loves to watch the baby's development... she's even been showing my books to the kids that I take care of, and she's shown a little too much to Justin, the 9 year old boy who was mildly curious, but is now mostly just grossed out by what Lydia has shown him. :)

As for how I'm doing during this pregnancy... all I can say is tired. I have never wanted to sleep so much in my life. This one is really draining me! I'm finally over (well... mostly over) my cold that I've been fighting for the last 2 weeks, but I'm still completely exhausted. My appetite is a little messed up- I don't really want much to eat, but I'm not getting sick. There are just very few things that sound good to me right now. I hope this changes soon... until then, I hope the prenatal vitamins are doing their job. So those of you on facebook, get used to seeing "tired" and "going to bed" on my status messages! lol

New addition...

I'm sure most of you have now heard our exciting news... we are going to have a new baby! It looks like the due date should be early June, 2009. I know it's early to be announcing this, but Lydia has been blurting it out to everyone she sees, so the cat's out of the bag thanks to our little blabber mouth. She is very excited to be a big sister, especially when she realized that she will always be the oldest. Last night we went all the way from, "when I'm 6 the baby will be born" to when I'm 19 the baby will be 13" one year at a time. That was all she needed to know... haha. Anyway, thanks to everyone for the kind words of congrats and support. More to come! 

Popo at the beach

Of course there were many aspects of our beach vacation in June this year that we loved, but one that stands out in our memories was that of Popo and his iPod. Thanks to Amy, one of these moments was preserved in video, and now it is available for all to see on You Tube as well. :) Enjoy!

Jack's coming back!

10 wonderful years...

It's hard to believe that it has been 10 years since this photo was taken... Elliot and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary over the weekend. Marriage has been an interesting adventure, with lots of ups and downs, good times and bad, but I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. Happy anniversary Elliot! I love you!!!

Kindergarten bound!

One of the most unbelievable yet exciting things in our lives right now is that our baby girl started Kindergarten last week. Wow. Time really does fly when you're having fun! Here is a picture of Lydia at the entrance of her school on the first day. She is loving school, her teacher, and her new friends, but most of all she enjoys riding the bus to school with all of her old friends from the neighborhood.

Welcome

Now that a wonderful summer has come to an end, there are lots of exciting things to share about our family, mostly Lydia, so I thought I would try keeping a blog page again. So, welcome to the new Hill family blog! Please feel free to check things out and send me a message if you think of anything I need to add!