Sloan Lillian Kunz

Finally a blog about our beautiful new bundle of joy. Sloan Lillian.....

She was born Monday, July 19th at 12:38 pm, weighing in at 7' 11" and 20 1/2 inches long. We had a scheduled C-section and all I have to say is, BEST THING EVER. We went in, did some things and had a baby! Yea. The recovery was so much better and easier on me. Sloan came out looking like a doll, with very chunky cheeks.

She is a dream, sleeps well, poops A LOT! Eats ok, we had some issues the first week with her having a bad case of diarrhea that led to her going on formula for a few days and a fun trip to the ER. She is much better now and we will find out in a few hours how much she weighs, we are thinking well over 8 pounds. She had dropped down to 7'4" but by her turning a week she was back to birth weight plus an ounce. She is still on formula plus my milk, but will only take the bottle. So much different than Gavin, but it is nice for the family to help feed her. I just miss the bonding of breast feeding.

Big brother Gavin absolutely loves her, wants to kiss her a lot, and of course hold her. Last week when he was getting ready to go to school he told me he didn't want to go, "because he would miss his baby." I literally started crying. He is very sweet to her, to us, not so much. He is still in his terrible 2's and has thrown more tantrums in the past 2 weeks than ever before. But happy to say he adores his sissy. That is all I really care about, that he is nice to her and isn't resentful and mean to her.

Our first two weeks with her have been action packed! Not just her trip to the Er, but we have gone out for dinner with her twice now (three times after tonight, we are meeting some friends for Sushi! Yum!), been to Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, the park, swim lessons twice, and this past weekend we went up to Estes for a bit and went for a small hike around Bear Lake. More of a walk really and for lunch in town. Of course I brought the camera to document this and went to take a picture only to find out that the battery was dead. Oh well! She did amazing every time.

I have realized that Gavin is more work than she is! She is definitely sleeping better than her big brother~seriously that kid is up ALL THE TIME in the night. He doesn't want to sleep with us, he wants Daddy to sleep with him. It is a joy.

Some cute comments from my son lately: When Sloan was crying and my Mom was holding her, "Don't cry baby, Grammy will take care of you." Made both my Mom and I cry! Since I am pumping, he is fascinated with it and I have caught him a few times trying to "pump his boobies". Or he will bust in on my while I am pumping and ask, "do you have milk yet Mommy?" Greg will be appalled I put this on here, but oh well! At least I am not posting the pics of him actually pumping! I do love all the pics of him with his helmet and/or goggles on. He wears his helmet constantly. As you can see, even to go to the bathroom. He is a nut job!

On another note, I just made my very first batch of zucchini bread, and then realized we have no butter. Still yummy though! We are on day 8 of no fridge and are out of everything! Luckily Gavin is camping with my Mom and Marv right now. You have no idea how much you rely on appliances until one is on the fritz. Thanks again to all the well wishers! We appreciate it!

Craziness

A pic of our little girl, Sloan Lillian- more to come

I know I am supposed to be doing a blog on our beautiful new bundle of joy, BUT.... of course there is some craziness going on. Every time I try to sit down and start a blog about her something comes up. To sum it up, we had an ER visit already for her on Sunday for dehydration. Poor thing had some serious diarrhea for a few days, alas all is ok and she is now an ounce past her original birth weight! And then of course we are feeling better and not stressed on Monday and wham, our fridge goes out that night. LOVELY. To sum it up, it sucks to not have a fridge with kids, especially when I have to pump and store my milk because Sloan was still on formula. Agh! We are still living out of coolers as of today. On the bright side, I am going to be doing some serious fridge cleaning when it gets fixed! And then the last thing happened yesterday, Gavin is more upset about this than anything else. Elvis once again popped Gavin's brand new pool. We had gotten it out Monday and used it one time. That freaking dog. Anyone want a bulldog?

Tick Tock

We are now down to 5 days before D Day. I had my very first Braxton Hicks contractions last night. I was a little freaked out, had no idea what was going on. Most don't know, but with Gavin I never felt any contractions. He never wanted to come out! So yes, last night at about 2 am I was contemplating waking Greg and taking me to the hospital. Luckily I didn't, would be jumping the gun a bit! Come on baby!

Undies,Swimming Lessons & Randomness

We are trying to get Gavin fully potty trained. Last weekend we did underwear all weekend and he did very well. No accidents. He even poops in the potty, but will go a little bit, have to show us, dump it and repeat. About 3 times every time he goes. It is disgusting. I know, TMI. Oh well, but at least this explains a few of the pictures, I just let him pick out some new underwear and before we could even put them away he did this with them (please excuse the boogie in one of the pics and no they have not been worn yet.):

We also started swim lessons on Saturday. It went great, Gavin loves the water and did wonderful. He is still considered too little to not have a parent in the class and was by far the biggest kid, unsure if he was the oldest though. Was it really informative? Not really, we do more with him by ourselves in pools, but like Greg said, for 4 classes we are only paying $11. So can't complain. The only time he got upset was when we had to get out, the lessons are only 30 minutes long. Not long enough for our little guppy!

Now onto some randomness. My son's infatuation with Taylor Swift. It is getting to be a problem. I thought it was cute when he would hear her song and go dance around and then inform me she was his "girlfriend". First off, how does he even know what a girlfriend is? And two, she is a little old for him. Today though, was a little too much. We were driving home from Target and I went to call Greg. My car has blue tooth, so it automatically shuts off the radio when the phone starts ringing. YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT I THREW AWAY HIS DOGGY. He starts yelling from the back seat, "TURN IT BACK, MY SONG, MY SONG." It was of course a Taylor Swift song. I hung up and we listened to it and he was not happy when it ended. His infatuation may be getting worse. Lady Gaga is a close second, but Taylor is the reigning girlfriend right now. Great, I won't even bring up his love of his teacher Miss Stacy. How when you ask about school, her name always is first thing out of his mouth. It is ridiculous.

The Last Day

Ok, finally, 3 weeks later, I am finally done with our trip to Nebraska and the Black Hills! Yea!

Our last day there was spent riding the train from Hill City (where we were staying) to Keystone and back. It was an old Steam Engine and Gavin was very in awe of the conductor and his yelling "All Aboard" at the appropriate times. We had a good time and saw some wildlife and beautiful scenery. When I was looking for a place to stay, I had no idea of the good areas, convenient, etc. to stay for our trip. I found a wonderful place I liked in Cussler Park but when I finally got around to booking found out they were booked. Once we were up there, I was glad that we did not get into the area, I learned that staying in a National Park, it cost daily to get in along with another "lodging fee". So I finally came across this place in Hill City and we struck gold. It was off the beaten path, quaint, clean and they had a ton of horses and 4-wheelers so that kept Gavin occupied. Plus with all the towns we went into, by far Hill City was my favorite. I would definitely go back to the same place! Here are some pics of our cute cabin and our view.

Hope everyone had a Happy 4th! I of course forgot to take any pictures! We did not see any fireworks with our lovely weather. Oh well!

Black Hills Day 2 and a Rant/Apology from Moi

We will start off with my rant and apology. I have re-read my last few blogs and they are less than stellar, a little redundant and riddled with errors. So I apologize, I think lack of sleep and overall bitchiness is taking me over. Lately it is a good night if I get 5 - 5 1/2 hours of sleep and an hour nap. I AM A SLEEPER. This is killing me! Plus the baby has dropped- I never knew what that meant before, Gavin never dropped. So I had no idea the pain, OH THE PAIN. Like a bowling ball is sitting on my pelvis and at any minute my insides are going to shatter. That walking hurts, sitting hurts, EVERYTHING HURTS. It is almost easier to sleep on the couch, I don't need help to get on it like I do our bed. My bruiser son is looking a mess right now. He has a huge fat lip now and we finally got to look inside his mouth last night. It wasn't pretty, Greg was worried he may need stitches. Poor Monkey! Wow, just reading that I am once again all over the board. Oh well. 2 1/2 more weeks!
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Onto Day 2 of our trip! We decided to hit Mt. Rushmore first thing in the morning. It was a very cool morning, which was perfect for our plan of hiking to the "spot" for a better look. We even had the backpack all set for Gavin to ride in when he got tired. Unfortunately once we got there we were told the hiking trail was closed until noon (we got there about 9). The same with the next day, which was a bummer. Gavin really liked it overall, he was fascinated with the "men's faces".

After that we drove into Cussler National Park and on the Needles Highway. Which was very cool, there were several one lane tunnels that were fun to drive in. It was beautiful and we ended up at Sylvan Lake. We all needed to stretch our legs, so we walked around it and enjoyed the scenery. Gavin loved seeing all the fisherman/woman. He is very into fishing after that little stop.

Our day ended with us going back to the cabin, taking a snooze and then heading into Keystone for dinner. We sat outside (which we figured out on day 1 would keep Gavin occupied looking at all the motorcycles, etc.) at the Ruby House, which is an old whorehouse. It was a nice evening and we topped it off with buying fudge and ice cream before heading home.

The Walking Wounded

Before I finish my blogs about our trip I needed to throw in some pics of my little boy who looks like he could be a UFC fighter lately. Besides all the cuts, bruises, ginormous mosquito bites that look like a 3rd eye all over his body; he also cut himself with his long nails over his eye and today gave himself a nice fat lip by falling out of the bed and landing on his face. I had to take a pic of it, I felt so bad when he came stumbling down the stairs at 5:30 this morning crying and bleeding. My poor son.

A few weeks ago Mom and I ventured to the Zoo with all the kids, we had a great time and I of course snapped some pics of Gavin with his cousins.

Gavin and Jack checking out the bears who were hanging out in the trees

Grammy and all her grandkids

Gavin all tuckered out on the way home, of course still holding his sucker