Lena's Baby Blessing and more updates

Sunday, September 5th came and went and everything seemed to go well. Lots of people came to support us and Lena's blessing was beautiful. :) Randy got a little bit nervous while giving the blessing because of course Lena decided to cry during the whole blessing, but the good news is that she was perfectly quiet for the rest of church. :P She doesn't really enjoy being on her back when she is awake.

We got together with Rosie and Alex on Monday (Labor Day) and they were so nice to let her try out the Bumbo seat they had received for Baby Getts and she loved it! (Will post picture soon) Needless to say I ended up buying one. We finally got a chance to play Settlers of Catan and it was really fun! I love that game and somehow cannot get enough of it. :) Especially when I'm playing with people who like it as much as I do. Unfortunately Eva wasn't able to come because she went to Logan that day to visit her friend Liz. :(

Lena has officially rolled over! :) From her front to her back. It was kind of funny when she did it because I don't think she realized what was going on. She was screaming at the top of her lungs while squarming around on her tummy and suddenly rolled over... she looked really confused and stopped crying for a second then after realizing that being on her back instead of her front still wasn't what she wanted, she continued screaming. Of course I then saved her from being so sad... poor thing.

I think that today was her first time actually talking to Dad on the phone. :) She goo-ed at him a couple of times and it was quite cute. :) She kept talking when I took the phone away from her to talk to Randy some more while smiling really big the whole time. All of the other times that I've tried to get her to say something in the phone she has been silent, so it was pretty exciting. Especially since she didn't even get to see Dad today. He left for work before she woke up and had to stay late at work (still isn't home) and she is already in bed. :(

As far as updates on the triathlon training we are being kind of slackers... although, I did run 3 miles with Jessie (Randy's sister) on Saturday and it was SOOOOO much fun, I can't believe I ran that far and was still able to talk to her the entire time... we averaged 12 minute miles which is excellent for me. :) I ran again on Monday (2 miles) and averaged 11 minute miles... so I'm already improving. The wind was too strong for me to go running again today, hopefully tomorrow we can go swimming or something.

I think that is all of the updates so far, I'll write again soon! Here are some more pictures to enjoy.

After Two Monthes of Being Mommy

It has been about two months (and a week) since our little Lena was born. She has been growing like a weed and is learning new things everyday! I am amazed by how fast she is learning! It is kind of funny, because before I had Lena, when people would talk about how exciting it was when their child could roll over or "coo" I thought, "cool" but didn't think it was THAT big of a deal... something changes when you have your own. It is so crazy because now every little "coo" she makes is so exciting to me. I was there to witness her when she was able to do nothing but cry and eat, making every little thing they learn big enough news tell everyone I see about it. Being a mom is really an amazing experience. :)

As far as the things that Lena can do now... she has been smiling nice and big for a while now and she starting talking when she was about six weeks old (her favorite words to say are "Ah-goo" and "Ha-ooh") :). She is also standing with just us holding her little hands and when she does this it always looks like she is doing a little jig! It is SOOOO cute! The other day I took out a couple of her toys and she was entertained by them for about half an hour! I would hold the little butterfly jingle toy a couple inches from her face and she was amazing by it and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get those little hands of her's to wack it so that it would jingle. :)

Sleeping always seems to be a big subject with babies. Lena has always been a great sleeper from the time we brought her home from the hospital.... well... at least at night. :) She sleeps anywhere from 6 to 9 hours at night but has a hard time with naps during the day. We started having her sleep in her own room on August 20th and that has gone pretty well, however, we do usually have to let her cry for about 10 minutes before she falls asleep, which is really hard to do. A friend told me that we could do this during the day for naps too... so I'm trying to get the courage to do it... it's hard to listen to her cry. :( But I know that she has to learn how to sleep on her own.

Randy and I are training for a mini triathlon, which has been harder to do than I expected. For swimming we have been taking turns with Lena and swimming at the pool... same with biking. Running is easier because we have a pretty good jogging stroller so we can take Lena with us and run together. :) Maybe I already wrote about this in my last post... it has been so long that I forget, so I apologize if that is the case. :P I will start writing more often! I promise! :)

Thanks everyone for all of your love and support! We appreciate it more than you will ever know!

Here are some pictures from the last little while:

Lena Elizabeth Williams

On June 23rd, 2010 at 8:12 pm Lena Elizabeth Williams joined our family. She weighed 8 lbs 4 oz and was 20 inches long.

From the moment I laid eyes on our sweet little baby I was in love. Her sweet little cry and adorable dimples stole my heart in that first moment. It really is an amazing feeling to see your own little one for the first time, the one you've been waiting to meet for nine months with great anticipation. I cannot explain how wonderful it is.

Looking back and remembering the first time I met Lena has made me realize how much I've really gotten to know her. In those first moments I knew that I loved her so much but couldn't imagine how much better it could just keep getting!

Here are some more newborn pictures of Lena:

Lena's Birth Story

(Written April 2011)

(warning: if you don't like the details... don't read)

I had plans to birth Lena naturally. ;)  I took a birthing class and felt pretty prepared, I had written a birth plan for my doctor and nurses so that they would know my wants of doing natural and being able to walk around between contractions, etc… to help.  

The night before Lena arrived we went to Chipotle with Randy’s family who were visiting for Andy’s 4^th birthday, I thought for sure I had at least another week before Lena would decide to come.  Well, the thing I least expected happened and my water broke (I had heard that less than 5% of women have their water break before labor) at about 2:00am (June 23, 2010), I was sleeping and felt a couple of mild contractions, but at the time, I didn’t know they were contractions, I figured I was just having gas pains… then I thought I felt wet around my legs, then I thought “you’re kidding yourself Olga, it can’t be happening now…”  and I fell back a sleep for another hour or so… then I got up to use the bathroom and realized that it was really happening, my water had broken!  I called out to Randy several times until he woke up, “Um, I think my water broke”  and he said “Are you sure?” he didn’t want to make a trip to the hospital for nothing at 3:00am and I said, “… pretty sure…” so he got up to see and agreed with me.  I got some new clothes on and a towel to sit on in the car (our bags and carseat were already packed and ready to go).  I called the hospital as we left the house letting them know that my water broke and that we were headed in… We made it there about half an hour later and the whole time I was sitting in the car just trying to comprehend that the day was finally here, this was really going to happen… it boggled my mind. J  

When we got to the hospital the nurse did a test to make sure that my water had actually broken, the first test came out negative so she asked to “take a look” saying that it’s possible that I might have just “peed my pants” and I thought, “I’m pretty sure that’s not what it is”  anyway,  after taking a look she said, “oh yeah, it definitely looks like your water broke” and she took a “better” sample to test.  They asked if I had had any contractions and I mentioned that I felt a couple when I was sleeping, but haven’t had one since (it had been about 2 hours).  The nurse called my doctor and said that since I wasn’t contracting on my own they were going to induce labor.  Now that I look back, I’ve heard that you can wait 24 hours to see if you start going into labor on your own before they need to induce labor, but the doctor immediately had them strapped me to the bed, hook me up to monitors and IV and told me I couldn’t eat anything (going against all of my requests in my birth plan).  They then put me on petossin to induce me.  I haven’t experienced any different, but from what I hear, Petossin makes contractions worse than “normal” contractions.   At first they didn’t seem too bad, Randy would look at the monitor screen and notice that I was having one and say “it doesn’t even look like you’re in pain” and I said “these aren’t too bad, I can handle this”.  About an hour later I wasn’t progressing how they wanted me to so they upped my petossin… this is when the contractions started getting really bad.  It was really hard, but I listened to some relaxing music I had prepared and tried to breath and relax through each contraction.  At this point I was sitting on a birthing ball and leaning back on Randy… with each contraction he would talk me through it, but it was really hard… I thought I had high pain tolerance, but this was worse than I had expected for sure.  After about one or two hours of this, the nurse came in and mentioned that I still wasn’t progressing enough, so they upped the petossin again.  I thought the contractions were really bad before… well now they were almost unbearable.  I would get scared every time I started to feel another one coming it was so bad.  I kept asking Randy, “remind me why I am not getting drugs?”  and he just kept encouraging and saying that I could do it and that I was doing great.  Well, they came in to check to see how dilated I was (they can’t check as often when your water has already broken from risk of infection).  Well, after all of that really hard labor and contractions, I thought that I would be more than half way there, but I was only dilated to a 5 (this was at about 2:00pm I think).  I went on about another hour with the hard contractions… I was almost in tears from the pain and from knowing I still had so much further to go so I finally broke down and received an Epidural.   The Epidural takes longer than one or two minutes to put in and you have to be completely still… meaning I would have to be completely still through one of my contractions.  They had me sit on the edge of the bed and hold on to/hug Randy.  They started putting it in and one of my contractions hit, I knew that if I moved that it could mess it up and cause problems… that was part of the reason I wanted to go natural… so I willed myself to hold completely still and was successful.  Oh the relief!  It was so wonderful!  For the next hour and a half I SLEPT through my contractions!  The nurse checked me soon after I received my Epidural and I was at a 7, wow, I was so glad I got it I don’t think I could hold out that much longer to get to a 10 (That was about 4:00 or 5:00pm).  Well, after my nap I noticed that I could start feeling my contractions again, I did not want that… I thought if I got the epidural, might as well make sure it was working...  I had been pushing the button (that delivers the meds), but my feeling was still coming back.  I called the nurse and she came in to check everything… I guess that the epidural had run out or that it wasn’t even delivering it to my body when I pressed the button.  The anesthesiologist came in and told me that he nurse didn’t know what she was talking about, and gave me an extra dose through my IV… I still don’t know what the true story was, I just knew that it was starting to hurt again.   At around 6:30pm my mother-in-law and sister-in-law decided that they wanted to just come to the hospital to ask the people at the desk how I was doing (out of curiousity) but the people at the desk were not allowed to share any information and sent them to our room.  We knew that we didn’t want anyone but us (Randy and I) and the doctor and nurse in the room during labor and delivery so before the nurse let them in she asked them who they were and came to tell us.  Well, me being in pain and not in the best mood didn’t want them to come in so Randy went out to let them know how things were going.  During that time the nurse checked me again and guess what!  It was it, I was at the 10!  The nurse went out to tell Randy and Jessie (his sister) knew how important that was and told him to get in there and her and her mom left to wait for the call.  The nurse called the doctor and we worked on some “practice pushes”.   I only had to push for about 15 minutes before Lena arrived.  In fact, they told me to stop pushing so as to not chance having the baby before the doctor arrived.  A while ago Randy mentioned that he didn’t really want the watch when the baby came out but as I was pushing he got so excited and couldn’t resist looking.  He told me, “I see her head, I see her head” when she crowned and a couple of pushes later  Lena arrived at 8:12pm on Wednesday, June 23^rd, 2010.  I could not believe it.  She was here!   They placed her on my chest skin-to-skin while I delivered the after birth and Randy cut the cord.  I then worked on getting her to nurse for the first time which went pretty well.  They then proceeded to weigh and measure her and do all of the other tests that they do.  It’s so crazy to think about how new I was at it and how much has happened since then.  Life is amazing and I am so grateful to be able to take part in its creation.  I’m so grateful to be the mother of Lena Elizabeth Williams and am excited for the years ahead of us.  

Eva's High School Graduation!

Eva graduated from West High School with a 4.0 GPA.  You know that theory about the youngest kids being smarter than the older kids because they get to learn from the older kids' mistakes?  Well, in Eva's case I completely agree with this theory.  She has definitely been the smartest Comollo because she's been smart enough to learn from our mistakes.  She excelled in High School and has followed our (the older siblings) footsteps in the good things and has avoided following the footsteps with mistakes. :)  I'm proud of her for doing her best!  Congratulations Eva!!!  A fine future awaits you for sure. :)  Just keep taking our advice. ;)

Monroe with Eva

(Written September 2012)

I'm starting to realize now that I look at these pictures how much time I got to spend with my cutie sister Eva before we had kid(s).  It's crazy to think about life before Lena since now she is my life.   Here are some pictures of a trip that we took to Monroe with Eva.  It was lots of fun having her there with me and I hope she'll join us on more Monroe trips in the future. :)  

Spring Break 2009 - Caribbean Cruise

(written September 2012)

In March 2009 I was still in school so we decided to spend my spring break on a cruise!  It was a lot of fun being able to eat prepared food whenever we wanted and to see some sites and hang on the beach. :)  I have more pictures to come with specific updates but I wanted to start getting this stuff documented before it all got lost.