Everett's First 3 Months

Everett is already 3 months old. Where has the time gone?

It is just flying by, and each day is SO busy. Everett has gone to visit big brothers at school, he's gone on play dates, he's visited family out of town, he's gone to a wedding, he's gone to the beach, he's stayed in a hotel, and he's even attended his first concert - The Monkees!! (I don't know how he could ever top that!)

At 3 months old, Everett weighs about 15 lbs. He's wearing size 6 month clothes and size 2 diapers. His hair is dark brown (and thinning), and his eyes are a light blue color. He hasn't gotten sick yet (thank you, God!), and he's a great eater. He still nurses quite often during the day (only going about 1-2 hours at the most between feedings) and cluster feeds at night. He sleeps 5-7 hours straight most nights!! (That started when he was about 2 months old - before then, it was up after only 2-4 hours.) He has been in his crib in his own room for almost 2 weeks now. He is starting to smile more and more, and he loves to be held. He likes to kick his legs. He loves laying in his little bath tub while big brothers are bathing and enjoys his own bath time when Daddy pours the warm water on him. He also likes laying in his little woodland friends bouncer and watching the animal toys sway on the toy bar. And his first tooth is already starting to grow in!

Southern has been so excited about Everett since he first learned I was pregnant. He couldn't wait for the baby to be born. So on Everett's first day of life when Southern asked if he could hold him, I told him "sure!".

Everett's first bath at home

Everett's first time in the stroller. (This was a baby shower gift we received when I was pregnant with Southern)

Everett's first trip to get the mail

one month old

Everett's first time in the Ergo

our first family picture at home

Baylor refuses to nap during the day and will some times fall asleep on the car ride to school to pick up big brothers. When he naps that late, he stays up late. He and Everett are our night owls.

Everett's first lunch at school with big brothers

Everett spent his nights during the first 2 3/4 months in the Rock N Play by our bed.

Everett's first presidential election!  

Picking up Everett's birth certificate - he slept through the whole thing

Everett's first Halloween

picnicking at the park

At the KinderMoms Halloween party. Everett was our little tennis ball.

Everett started smiling in his sleep occasionally before he started smiling as a reaction to us smiling and talking to him.

before the school fall festival

Everett made it through most of election night but fell asleep before we had the final count

Everett's first time on the ferry 

with Great Granny Ehlers

on Halloween night

after visiting the USS Lexington

with Joyce

Everett's first time on the beach

after the wedding

in Port A

With Granny Hahn

Everett's last night in our room

putting up the Christmas tree

Everett napping on his biggest brother

with Santa

Christmas Decorating / Music Video

With school schedules, baby feeding times, and all of the other busy happenings our family has this holiday season, our Christmas decorations are going up a little at a time. We have one box of decorations unpacked, and our tree is up with lights on (no ornaments yet). We plan to do the outdoor lights today - yay!

The kids love decorating, and they were really excited to get everything out of storage. The first box they wanted to open was the one that contained our toy nativity set and our plush singing/moving decorations. We have a moose from Cabela's that sings "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" that was a gift to Dustin probably about 10 years ago. As the kids were playing with them and singing and dancing along, it brought to mind all of the previous years spent watching my kids with these same decorations. I remembered that I had taken a video of Southern after he first learned to sing that song with the moose, and I decided to pull it up to show the boys. It was ADORABLE, and they loved watching it. Southern was inspired and asked if we could do it again. He would imitate his 2 1/2 year old self and Remington would imitate his 6 month old self. Great idea! It was HILARIOUS so I have to share it with you all!!

First, please remind yourselves of this video from Dec 2011: http://lchahnwyatt.blogspot.com/2011/12/hit-me-with-your-best-shot.html

And now the same guys and the same moose 5 years later:

Southern said he wanted to remake this video every 5 years. I'm in!

Welcome to the world, Everett!

Everett was not part of Dustin's and my plan. I was selling my maternity clothes and our baby stuff thinking that we were done having kids. But God had another plan in mind for us. And I am so very thankful that he did. How could we ever have thought that our lives were complete without Everett in them? It's mind-boggling. I love him so much. I could stare at him all day long. He's so perfect and precious, and he's ours.

Except for the sonogram days, I was making my doctor appointment for the mornings so that I could go to them after dropping the boys off at school. But, I decided that it would be better for me to make my 38 week appointment at 4:30pm so that Dustin could go with me. I am SO glad I did. My platelet count had been dropping again like it had done with Baylor, but this time it was dropping slowly, and with each appointment I was worried that I would hear it was now too low. My doctor walked into the exam room that Tuesday with, "we're having a baby this week!" I was 38 weeks along, so it wasn't too soon like it was with Baylor, but it was still shocking. She said, "I'm busy tomorrow, so would you like to have this baby on Thursday or Friday?". And Dustin's birthday was on that Friday, so I let him make the call. Would he want Everett to share his birthday or to be born the day before? We talked about it, and he asked the advice of the doctor, and he decided Thursday was the day. We had an appointment at the hospital on September 8th at 6am to be induced!

We had one day to get ready. There were several things still undone that I had wanted finished before baby, but the main things were ready, and we were out of time. I got very little sleep Wednesday night as I was cleaning the house (!), and I was also very nervous about what was to come. Thursday morning came very quickly! We drove to the hospital and checked in through the Emergency Room entrance since the hospital wasn't open yet. It took quite awhile to check in, and then we made our way up to the 2nd floor. They weighed me and got me settled into a room. I was soon hooked up, and labor was progressing. They said that I was already having contractions before I got there, but they were so small that I couldn't feel them yet. After they got my labor really going with the IV, I could sure feel them though! I had decided to try to not get the epidural this time, and there were some moments there where I honestly thought I could not go on as the pain was so intense, but I did. At one point, a nurse checked me and said she thought I was up to 9 cm. My main nurse checked right after and said that no, I was closer to 7 cm. Ugh!! I told Dustin, "he'll never be born!" The last hour or so was the worst. I began pushing a little earlier than they wanted me to, but I was at 10 cm, and I told them I was ready. My main nurse told me that she would call the doctor in about 10 minutes and not to push yet, but another nurse said that I could bear down if I felt like I needed to. I took that advice to heart, and my doctor almost didn't make it to the birth! They had pulled another doctor from somewhere in the hospital when they realized how close Everett was to being born, but my doctor made it. She had just enough time to put on her mask and gloves, and then she was catching him! She asked the nurse why they didn't call her sooner.

Dr Geldernick said that he weighed about 9 pounds when she caught him, and then he peed on her! Haha. She passed him to a nurse and got ready for the afterbirth. They wrapped him up in a blanket and passed him to me. He was beautiful. It was love at first sight! I was a sweaty mess and had been in the worst pain of my life just a few minutes earlier, but in the first pictures taken of me with Everett, I have a huge smile on my face. I was so happy to have been given such a precious gift.

Our "little" lime tree

The lime tree that grows along with our family...

Do you remember this post from three years ago? http://lchahnwyatt.blogspot.com/2013/07/lime-tree.html

It talks about the lime tree that Dustin's grandparents gave to us as just a tiny little sprout in a pot. Well, that little sprout is now as big as our house. For some reason, I got the idea to pose beside this lime tree when I was pregnant with Southern so we could show the growth of the tree alongside the growth of our children. And now that our family is again growing by one more child, we posed by the lime tree. Sadly, both Poppy and DeDe have passed, so we aren't able to show them the latest picture.

August 2016, pregnant with Everett

July 2013, pregnant with Baylor

May 2011, pregnant with Remington

March 2009, pregnant with Southern

 Notice in the most recent picture, the lime tree is almost reaching our roof. In the 2013 picture, it is up to the bottom of the windows on the second story of our house. In the 2011 picture, it is only up to the bottom of the window on the first floor, and in the 2009 picture, it's not even as tall as our front door while in a pot!

And, a bonus photo. It doesn't feature the lime tree as well, but I love the happiness and love that I see in our boys' faces. I'm going to print this one out and take it with me to the hospital in the morning.

Last full day pregnant

Well, today is my last full day to be pregnant. Baby boy should be arriving tomorrow. We have an appointment to get induced tomorrow morning at 6am at the hospital.

He had his little hands in front of his face when we did the 3D sonogram back in July, but here are a few pictures of baby boy.

I am currently 38 weeks along, and we found out at my latest doctor appointment yesterday that my platelet count has once again dropped so much that we need to induce early. Luckily, I lasted longer this go round (Baylor was 6 weeks early), and everything should be just fine with the baby developmentally at this point in the pregnancy. I had a feeling about this doctor appointment, so I scheduled it to be at 4:30pm so that Dustin could come with me. I normally go in the mornings, but I was thinking he should be there, and I was right. After seeing the results of last week's platelet count, my doctor came into the exam room yesterday with "we're having a baby this week!" She then said tomorrow wasn't good for her, so would we like Thursday or Friday. Yikes! I left the decision up to Dustin since his birthday is on Friday. He was back and forth on the decision but ultimately settled on Thursday.

While the list of projects I had wanted to do before baby arrived is not anywhere close to being done, the baby's room is ready! Baylor had moved to "the big boys room" awhile back. I would sit and rock him in their room while they fell asleep and then take Baylor to his crib in his room. He soon decided that he wanted to stay with brothers in their room. So, back in December or January, we moved a toddler bed into Southern's and Remington's room. Baylor loved sleeping with them, and we were thinking of moving his dresser into that room and moving all of the toys into his room to have one bedroom and one playroom. Well, that plan didn't work out, but we did have a room with an empty crib, so God was working His magic.

We left Baylor's dresser in his room, but the bottom drawer was broken on it, and we needed a dresser for the new baby as well. We went "shopping" at Dustin's granny's house for Dustin's old dresser from when he was little. We ended up coming home with that one plus one more that we found in the attic of her old house. Southern and Remington had matching dressers, but they both needed bigger ones. So we did a little rearranging. Dustin gave his two large dressers to Southern and Remington. (Southern got the one that matches our bedroom furniture, and Remington got the one that used to belong to Dustin's great-grandfather). We moved Southern's and Remington's old dressers into "the little boys room" for Baylor and the baby. We moved Baylor's dresser with the broken bottom drawer into his closet to be used as a costume dresser. We threw away the bottom drawer, and now it's his shoe shelf. And Dustin got the two "new" dressers from his granny's.

I also rearranged the boys' names on their walls. I had bought wooden letters at Hobby Lobby to spell out their names, and I had painted them to hang over their crib when they were born. Since we had a new baby needing the crib, a new name was needed over it. And I had never gotten around to hanging Southern's name back up after the addition of their bunk bed. So I'm happy we got that all finished in time.

Baby Wyatt boy #4 will be named Everett Andrew Wyatt :) I've liked the name Everett since 7th grade when a new boy came to our class with that middle name. Dustin also liked the name ever since he saw the movie The Family Stone since one of the characters in that movie has that name. We even talked about it when I was pregnant with Remington before I discovered the name Remington in my baby name book and fell in love with it. We decided on Andrew as his middle name (even before we settled on Everett as his first name) because we honeymooed in Andrews, NC. We also went back there to stay for a few days this past Spring Break with our boys for our 10th anniversary (while I was pregnant with Everett). So I decided Everett's theme for his room should be mountains/elk/bears to remind us of our stays in The Great Smoky Mountains. I will eventually get some of our trip photos printed and put on the wall above his dresser. We already have some landscape pictures from our honeymoon framed and hung in the hallway between the two kid bedrooms from back before there were any kids.

So please keep me and Everett in your prayers tomorrow. We received a blessing for expectant parents from Father Tony this past Sunday after Mass. I hope everything goes smoothly!