Hello, Minneapolis.

Nice to meet you on this last-minute-planned-surprise-the-hubby birthday trip.  

Let's see.  First we checked into the hotel.  That was fun because it meant getting this munchkin out of the car.  If you'd have experienced the last fifteen minutes of the car ride, you would understand why this is a highlight.

 

 Then we accidentally stumbled upon the first-ever Target.  I guess people in Minnesota don't know that there are Targets everywhere, because when we told the cop tonight that we had a Target card (long story that I'll get to in a second), he says, "You have Targets in Kansas?!" like it was the craziest thing he'd ever heard.  Anyway.  

There was a drive-by of Ikea.  I guess that was kind of exciting since I've only ever seen an Ikea one other time, but it would be much more exciting if we would have had the time to actually GO there.  Then again I would probably be broke now.

And some nice dinner out, a trip to Mall of America, the Minnesota Children's Museum and so on and so forth.  You know, all the touristy stuff.  

And then we went for a leisurely walk around the lake.  And then we got our car broken into.  And then we got packed up and I sent Tim to the store for Oreos and got the kids in bed and - OH - right, the car.

Apparently people will break into a car in the middle of daylight in a very affluent neighborhood with people EVERYWHERE.  Who knew?!  And that fact that there are two car seats in the back and the thing they steal is a DIAPER BAG makes no difference to thieves.  I don't know that I mentioned it on this blog before, but about three weeks ago my wallet was stolen at a Children's Zoo.  What is WRONG with people?!  I am beyond sick over this.  I'm angry and hurt and violated and...I just feel stupid.  Naive and stupid.  As the cop said, this should make for a windy drive home tomorrow.  

Ugh.

Minneapolis, I hope we can meet again on better terms. 

I love this thing called sewing!

I was a little under the weather Friday with a super fun stomach bug (blech), so I wasn't able to go out of town with hubby and Ben for my SIL's graduation party.  I was pretty bummed, but we get to go back this weekend to see her actually graduate!  Yay!  

Once I was feeling better on Saturday, I got to sewing.  I sewed and I sewed...and I sewed some more!  Addie was pretty content to sit by mama and watch me sew/chew on her hands/sleep a lot (she's on a nap schedule now, yippee!) so I had a lot of time this weekend to get things done.  

I don't know why I haven't attempted sewing before now.  It's the greatest thing ever!  You take some fabric and you turn it into something cute.  All by yourself!  And a dress you make is so much better than a dress you buy.  Who woulda thought?!  Anyway, here's what I did because show and tell makes it so much more fun:

 

The line-up - most of it.

  

My first pants

 With a matching paci clip

 

I forgot to get a picture of my camera strap before I reattached it to the camera and I am NOT going through that hassle again, so here's the best I could do.

 

Funny story: I ordered this fabric to make cornices for above our curtains in our master bedroom.  I loved it so much that I couldn't resist using it on clothes instead.  When hubby came home last night and saw that I'd used this fabric, his exact words were, "You have a problem."  :)  I do.

 

Matching burp cloth and a flower with a yet-to-be-determined purpose.  It'll either get sewn onto the dress or become a headband.  Thoughts?

 

I made these yoga pants out of my favorite pair of  PJ pants I've ever had.  I got them a few weeks before we got married and wore them into the ground.  They had holes everywhere, but I salvaged enough good fabric to turn them into pants for Addie.  They really are even at the bottom, even though they don't look like it.

 

These turned out the worst of anything.  Fine for lounging, though.

 

My favorite!  I made these the same way as the first pair of pants I made, but I cropped them and sewed ruffles onto the bottom to make them ruffle capris.  

 

My second favorite.  Love this fabric!

 

I made this flower out of the aforementioned yoga pants.  Then I just hand-sewed it on.  Cuteness.  

Addie and I made another trip to Hobby Lobby today to get some boy fabric.  Next up: a messenger bag, some PJ shorts and a pair of nice pants for Ben and a few things to give to friends/family.  :)  

Fun stuff.

Giggles and shrieks and screams, oh my!

My little girl has a voice and she wants it to be known.  Though never quiet, Addie has really begun "talking" in the last few days.  And this is practically the only noise that populates our house now.







Even at her four month check-up this morning, she had lots to say:



Speaking of which she checked out great!  The doctor even mentioned he thinks she'll be physically early since she's already so in motion.  Always good to hear.  :)

STATS:

Weight - 3d: 7.69 (50.91%)  / 11d: 8.16 (50.68%)  / 2m: 11.69 (61%) / 4m: 13.5 (44%)
Height - 3d: 20" (66%) / 2m: 23" (63%) / 4m: 24.5" (57%)

S'more fun

Let's hear it for the corny girl!

Anyway.  We had a family night last Friday night.  It entailed a yummy dinner, a family walk and s'mores.  Yum.

Of course I documented the occasion. 

"Marshmallows, Mommy!"  This led to an eventual meltdown.

The goodies.

The FIRE.

 

The nice daddy who saves the little guy from his meltdown.

Or tries to, at least.

 

My brightly colored girl and I.

Eventually he made the meltdown worse.

It's family time.  Who's excited?

I just want my "amema!" (translation: marshmallows)

Hubby marveling at the size of the "perfect size for s'mores!" marshmallows.  It turns out they're not perfect for s'mores.  But they are perfect for melting all over the place and coating your toddler's body in sticky marshmallow!

MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  My love handles will thank me for not making this an every Friday evening occasion.

And time keeps flying by...

FOUR MONTHS!  How is my baby girl already four months old?  

Well, this month has been a much more pleasant month for everyone, but most importantly for you.  You don't cry too much anymore, though you do have your moments.  You cried so hard one day this month that you either passed out or just knocked yourself right into a deep sleep.  Not sure which, but I was *this* close to calling 9-1-1.  Well, I would have if I could have found my phone.  But all was well a few minutes later when you woke up and started laughing up a storm.  Silly girl.

You are an amazingly expressive gal.  I love capturing all your funny faces on camera.  You smile all the time.  And you giggle at mommy so much, I just love it.  When you see your daddy, you just light right up with an ear-to-ear grin.  You're a non-stop babbler.  Seriously, non-stop.  You're definitely going to be a talker, that I can tell! 

You truly interact with your toys now.  And you love your little tag blanket and lovey.

You are still happiest when we're holding you up standing.  You roll pretty well and pretty frequently from tummy to back, but not too often from back to tummy.  If I try to lay you down, you just try so hard to sit up.  Even in your car seat, you always have your head pulled up and your little abs flexed.  

You've developed a newfound love for your play mat and you're slowly but surely getting tall enough for your jumper.  

You don't sleep through the night.  Not even close.  But I'm cherishing my snuggle time with you, so it's okay.  You're taking to thumb sucking and using your paci less and less.  Nap times are still sporadic and not even close to on-schedule, but we'll get there.  You need your sleep, that's for sure!

You are also chunk-a-rific!  I could gobble your thighs right up.  You're fitting well into your 6-9 month stuff.  I'm anxious to see where you stand at your four month appointment next week.  

Mommy, Daddy & big brother love you like crazy, Addie Mae!

Names in the running.

What other names were you considering for your children?  I love hearing these.  I don't know why, but there's something so fun about learning what you could have been.  The other name my parents were considering for me?  Ariel Dawn.

Thank you, Mom & Dad, for sticking with your guns and naming me Chelsea Diane.  Because Ariel?  I would have been tortured come Little Mermaid.

My kids had several names in consideration.  For Ben, the top runners were:

Kingston Allan (although this was my favorite, hubby NEVER would have gone for it and I'm kind of glad in hindsight)
Parker Allan
Leo Benjamin (this was the other name we took to the hospital, but the second he was born we knew he was not a Leo)
Benjamin Allan (obviously)

Adalyn was going to be:

Alexis Mae (called Lexie - this was pretty much her decided-upon name until about a month before she was born)
Lola Mae
Charlotte Grace
Juliette Grace
Adalyn Mae

(If she was a he, it was pretty much decided that she would be Levi because it was the only boy name left that we both liked, though I would have pushed HARD for Silas because it's my favorite boy name now.)

We narrowed it down to Lola and Adalyn a few hours before she was born and then we sat there with her on my chest for an hour before naming her.  We went back and forth between Lola and Adalyn a million times.  In the end, I got the final say and chose Adalyn because I thought Tim liked it more.  A month after she was born I confessed to Tim that I regretted not naming her Lola, and he told me it was his favorite.  I remember spending a good two or three weeks after that trying to find a way we could change her name to Lola without coming off as straight-up CRAZY, but in the end she was Adalyn and now I can't imagine her as anything but.  My sweet little Addie Bear.  :)

PS - I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain her name.  Once upon a time, before Adalyn was a twinkle in my eye, a girl on a message board I'm part of (Dec 2008 babies) named her daughter Adeline.  For some reason, I always pronounced this "Add-ah-lynn."   One day, many, many months later, someone asked her how she pronounced her daughter's name. She responded with the logical answer, "Add-ah-LINE."  Right.  But when I got to really thinking about it, I thought "Add-ah-LYNN" was a pretty name, too.  Hence, Adalyn. I didn't love the spelling.  Well, still don't love the spelling.  But I didn't want to spell it Adeline and have her name mispronounced all her life and I didn't love Adalynn, so she became Adalyn.  And I love it now. It's TOTALLY her.  Mae came from both my grandma and my hubby's grandma's middle names.  Rewind to Ben: his middle name, Allan, is a combination of my dad's middle name (Alan) and hubby's dad's first name (Allen).  So it was only fitting that once we found out both my grandma AND his grandma's middle name was Mae, our daughter would share that.  :)

What has become of me?!?!

SORRY, I LOST A BIG CHUNK OF THE PICTURES ON MY OLD BLOG POSTS WHEN I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED SOME PICASA ALBUMS.  SAD FACE. :(

I have friends who look at houses all the time even when they're not in the market to buy one.  I do that with home appliances.  When we bought our house, we offered a lower price than they were asking for several reasons, one of which was to replace the dishwasher and stove.

We've lived in a lot of rentals in the past, and nearly every single one had cheap Hotpoint appliances.  We were pretty bummed to walk into our now-home and see Hotpoint appliances.  We loved almost everything about the house but that.  Our dishwasher is awful.  It's loud, it leaks water out the front door, doesn't clean that well unless you REALLY load it up with soap and now it's leaking disgusting amounts of rust water from the rinse agent dispenser.  No clue why, but it's grossing me out to open up the dishwasher and see this orange/brown/red liquid oozing down the door (if anyone can tell me why this is happening I will bake you cookies in my also awful stove!).  Our second mystery is that the detergent cup only opens about half of the time, so often I find myself having to wash dishes twice.  Talk about a $$ and water waster!  I thought it was from powdered detergent clogging the cup, but it gets stuck with liquid detergent, too.  Any plumbers/handymen/appliance repair folk in the house?

But in comparison to our stove, the dishwasher is a dream.  Our oven is not self-cleaning.  That's tough for me because I am not a stove-cleaning kinda gal.  It's got that impossible-to-keep-clean cooktop, like this:

I love cooking and baking, but it's kind of tough when baking times are so off because our oven apparently doesn't heat evenly or properly.  It doesn't alert me when it's preheated.  I've never had a stove that didn't beep when it was preheated!  Call me spoiled, I know, but it really bothers me.

The original plan, like I said, was to buy new appliances right away.  But we never got around to it.  And now we just can't justify it.  So I frequent Best Buy or Sears' websites and drool over dishwashers and ovens.  And every once in awhile I become obsessed and can't stop thinking about them.  Like now.  I would totally buy this stove:

And this dishwasher...

...if $1350 dropped into my lap from the sky.  Yep I would.

Times have changed.  When did new kitchen appliances and finding a new recipe for toothpaste start to trump things like designer jeans and fancy dinners out?

Feeling all self-sufficient again.

Last year, shortly before getting pregnant, I found a way to live pretty naturally on a budget.

But baby girl made me EXTREMELY sick and I got away from almost everything.  I let my garden go, couldn't handle the smell of vinegar and just got too lazy to do most things from scratch.

Now that I'm ready to go all organic, I have no choice but to get back to this stuff.  But this time around, I am loving it like crazy!  It feels so cool to be self-sufficient and to score awesome deals when I just can't make something myself.

So far, we have the garden (ALL credit goes to hubby on this):

 

Our little zucchini babies

 Our awesome grapes that will hopefully produce this year (it takes 3 years)

 

These are our herbs that have since been planted: basil, chives, parsley and cilantro.

 

Our whole line-up goes like this: peas, spinach, lettuce, strawberries, grapes, LOTS of tomatoes, oregano, zucchini and the aforementioned herbs.  :)

I went back to toothpaste makin' and it's fun stuff!  I got this recipe here.

And I am so digging this oil cleansing method.  I've heard so many people rave about it, but you just can't understand how awesome (and not insane) it is until you do it yourself.  Clean your face with oil?  Yep.  That's right.  My face has never been healthier or glow-ier.  :)

I still have a love-hate relationship with the No 'Poo thing.  First, we have to talk about the name.  I can think of 8,022 better names, but someone had to coin the term No 'Poo.  I try to do this.  I really do.  I succeed about 25% of the time.  But then the yummy smelling shampoo calls out my name and I cave.  The smell of vinegar has just NOT set well with me since my pregnancy with Addie. 

So I obviously can't make everything. It'd be cool if I could and I have my eye on owning a cow and some chickens and, you know, a small farm someday, but that's probably a pipe dream that won't ever come to fruition.  So I make do.  I joined a CSA (and today is my first pick-up, YAY!) but I supplement with really good deals when I can find them.  Like when Whole Foods had organic strawberries on sale for $1.99/lb a few weeks ago.  I was out of town so hubby did the dirty work for me and picked up 12 pounds.  We're trying our hand at growing some this summer, too, so between what we grow and the 12 pounds that are now hulled and flash frozen in the freezer, we should be set on strawberries until next summer.

What I can't grow or make or get really cheap locally, I like to buy in bulk from Azure standard.  It's a co-op that delivers all over the place (maybe by you?).  Their prices are good for lots of things.  I get pretty much ALL of my baking supplies here.  The organic produce is pretty good, too.  They deliver once a month to a parking lot near me and we pick up and haul all our goodies home.  It's kind of fun.  :)  I store my bulk goods in our "pantry" (I don't really have a pantry, sadly) in Ball canning jars and it works for me.  I get everything from sucanat to beans to flour here, and the prices on things like these can't be beat. (Also, a quick side note that I got my FAVORITE dishwashing detergent in the whole world - Biokleen automatic dish powder - cheaper than you can get the chemically-laden stuff at Target by buying in bulk through Azure last month.)

My friend Heather shared with me a good recipe for homemade laundry detergent.  Woot!  The jury is still out, but she swears by it AND she cloth diapers, so I figure it must work!  I made my first batch today and have a load of towels running as we speak.  Can't wait to see if it works, because it is about 1,000 times cheaper than the Tide that is my guilty pleasure.  What?  It smells SO GOOD.

 

Terrible picture, I know, but my camera cord is on the fritz and the cell phone is all I have right now.

And on a kind of related note, I also tried my hand at making some non-food or household product related things.  I made some baby headbands!  I'm so not crafty at all, but I'm trying to be.  I'm working on it.  So I found some DIY tutorials for the rosette headbands that I am so in love with and I tweaked them to my liking and wound up with these little babies:

 

Again with the bad quality, but I'm excited because I made those bottom three on clips so that I don't have to commit to a headband.  How fun is that?!  I felt all crafty and original even though I'm sure everyone and their sister has already made interchangeable rosette clips.  But don't tell me.  Let me think I came up with this all on my own.  :)

  What's funny is that you can see from left to right that they get better each time.  That one on the bottom left was my first rosette and it kind of sucks.  The one of the bottom right was my last and it's not too bad.  

Anyway, I just felt like sharing because sometimes as moms, we don't get recognition for things we do.  It's nice just to put it out there and be all, "Hey, world, look what I did!"  So there it is, world.

Happy Mother's Day!

...to all my mama friends!  I hope your day was magical and relaxing!

I got some extra snuggles from my kiddos today.  I sure love them and feel blessed to be their mama.  How did I get so lucky as to have these two amazing children?

Just a video...

...for the fun of it.  This girl is quite the opposite of Ben in the vocal department.  Not only did Ben not cry much, he didn't laugh much, coo much and now, he doesn't talk much.  I guess girls really are chattier!  Addie talks ALL DAY LONG just like this.  It's fun to have conversations with my little girl. 

Master bedroom love.

SORRY, I LOST A BIG CHUNK OF THE PICTURES ON MY OLD BLOG POSTS WHEN I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED SOME PICASA ALBUMS.  SAD FACE. :(

This really is the slowest renovation in history, but that's okay.  I'm learning patience. 

The dressers only took three weeks to finish!  ONLY.  Ha.  The bulk of the work was done in about five or six hours - just sanding down imperfections, roughing up the surface and then applying a coat of primer and two coats of white paint.  Then hubby applied some spray paint lacquer that didn't take well (think stripes of lacquer) so he applied some polyurethane over it.  The hardware was perfect as is (to me) so nothing was needed there.  I can't believe I forgot a before picture of these suckers, but I did.  Trust me when I say they were in bad shape!

So here we are now.  The bedroom is getting better, slowly but surely.

 

We still need a headboard, some floating bedside tables, some pretty fabric-covered cornice boxes on the windows like we did in Adalyn's room so that I can drop the curtains to the floor and some wall art.  We have a rug, it just hasn't been moved in yet.  I'm now debating changing the bedset/wall color.  Now that I've moved the dressers in the room and am seeing it come together, I think I might be okay keeping the gray paint because it works well with our bedset/curtains.  I don't know.  I'm the most indecisive person alive, so my mind will change 85 times before this project is done.  We'll see!

Well, that's everything for now.  :)

Addie's birth story.

Adalyn's birth story, as posted on my old personal blog shortly after she was born with a few additions I should have added the first time:

Little Adalyn Mae was born on Friday, 1/14/11, at 9:47 a.m. She was 8lbs, 1oz, exactly like her brother, and was 19" long. It's taken me awhile to get this announcement up, but I guess that's life with two little ones for ya! I rarely have more than a few minutes at a time to hop on the computer.

My contractions started up, like usual, on Thursday night as I was trying to fall asleep. Instead of laying in bed and getting my hopes up like I normally do, I decided to just jump up and take a bath, something I knew would make my contractions go away because it always does. This time, though, I continued to have contractions and then I felt a pop, similar to what I felt when my water broke with Ben. But when I got out, I wasn't sure my water had actually broken. I called the doctor anyway and she wanted us to come in, so we packed up and off we went.

We checked in and quickly found out that my water hadn't broken. I was so discouraged and thought that we would be headed home shortly. When they hooked me up to monitors, my contractions showed up. I guess that was the little bit of hope I needed to hold onto. I was still only 5 cm dilated, though, so they suggested I walk around. I knew it would have the opposite effect since my contractions always stop when I get active. Sure enough, I was right.

After walking for 30 minutes and not getting contractions, I opted just to lay down. Pretty soon after, my contractions started getting stronger, longer and closer together. Each one hurt a little more than the last, and when they checked me a little while later I was 6 cm dilated. I was pumped!

My doctor came in around 8:45ish Friday morning and broke my water. I braced myself for what was to come, and very quickly I was hit with a monster contraction. And then another, and another and I looked over at Tim and said something along the lines of, "I don't think I can do this without an epi, after all." He and the nurse reminded me that it was just about getting through one contraction at a time. I had planned on doing all sorts of things to handle the pain: the birth ball, the bath, walking around, moaning, anything. But as it turns out, the only thing I was capable of doing was demanding that Tim play the same song over and over (How He Loves Us, David Crowder Band), gripping the rail on the left side of the bed for dear life and screaming through every contraction, just sure I was going to die. I felt like my pelvis was breaking and the nurse rubbed my back really hard. It helped a ton.

Not too long after, I felt the urge to push. More than that, my body started involuntarily pushing. The nurse checked me and bolted out the door to get the doctor, who was at her office in another part of the hospital. I kept screaming at them that I needed the doctor there NOW, and after what seemed like an eternity, she finally ran in, gowned up and sat down just in time for me to push Addie out in one contraction! In retrospect, I was pretty upset that we chose to deliver where we did with who we did because they made me lay flat on my back to push her out even though I told them over and over again that trying to lay on my back was the most horrendous, tortuous pain ever and then they took her out of the room to bathe her even after Tim reminded them we specifically asked for them to bathe her in our room in our birth plan.

But it was AMAZING going natural and feeling every sensation, even if it was, by far, the worst pain of my life. Adalyn is a beauty and the perfect baby. She doesn't cry, she nurses like a champ, she makes the cutest little noises and she's just an angel. Ben still isn't too sure what to think of his "sisser." :)

And I just have to add in there that I accomplished my goal of only gaining 25 lbs this pregnancy! Yippee!




Adalyn Mae Hibbard's birth video from Chelsea Hibbard on Vimeo.

Ben's birth story.

Here's the raw & unedited birth story I wrote shortly after delivering my first baby, Benjamin.

Forewarning: Might be graphic to some people? I dunno, if you're not crazy into birth like me.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Tim and I spent all night Friday night laying on the couch, dreaming about our baby together and reveling in what we thought would be our last week or two alone. After hours of talking, we finally fell asleep a little after midnight. In retrospect, it was the most perfect way I can imagine spending our last night as a married couple sans child. Not even five minutes after falling asleep, I was suddenly woken by a gush of water (not huge, but enough to know that it meant something) and a painful cramp.

I immediately woke Tim up and asked him to get me a towel. I called the doctor, who told me to get to the hospital, and then called my mom. During our call, I had my first REAL contraction. I knew instantly that I had never before had a TRUE contraction. I'd had lots of things that I thought were contractions, but now I know why people say, "You'll just know when it's labor - trust me." Thinking we had lots of time, we slowly started packing things up and trying to figure out what we needed. My contractions started coming on really fast and REALLY hard, and I couldn't even stand through them. I told Tim that we needed to hurry things along, so we started throwing things in the car and headed to the hospital. The contractions kept getting even stronger, and by the time we got to the hospital (about a ten minute drive), they were coming on every four minutes.

I got wheeled up to L&D where the nurse did some sort of paper test to see if my water had broken. She said it was supposed to turn blue after wiping me if there were any traces of amniotic fluid. It, of course, did not. My heart dropped as I realized that this might not be "it." She decided to check me and the look on her face was priceless. She was like, "Oh honey, you're 7 cm and your water definitely broke! We're having a baby tonight - and soon!" By this point, the contractions were pretty much one on top of the other and I thought I'd pass out and throw up with each one. I tried the birth ball and walking around, and both only made things so much worse. Tim tried to rub my back, arms, legs, head, etc., and it also made the pain worse. I was literally seeing stars with every contraction by the time I decided to get my epidural. At that point, I was 8 cm dilated. After the epi, I dilated to 10 in probably ten minutes or so. It was unreal how quickly things unfolded! The epi was dreamland and I never felt another contraction (at least not in the way that I had been feeling them). I felt pretty guilty about caving, but in retrospect I don't know how I could have survived two hours of pushing in the intense pain I was feeling.

Pushing started around 3:45 a.m. and though I was pushing well, Benjamin kept coming down and then going back up. After an hour and a half, I found that holding both my legs myself while having the nurse and Tim's hands on my feet that I could push again worked much better and he came right down. The nurse went and got the doctor after having me feel his head - coolest thing EVER! Right as the doctor got in the room, I started to feel extremely nauseous and threw up for what seemed eternities. After I recovered from that humiliating experience, it was one more round of pushing and he came flying out, crying his lungs out!

The doctor placed him on my stomach and I was officially so in love I couldn't see straight! At 8 lbs, 1 oz and 18 inches, he's a short little chunk. He's gorgeous, healthy, has lots of hair and is pretty much the perfect baby. We haven't had a single problem breastfeeding, he rarely cries and his favorite place in the world is in mine or Tim's arms. Life is good.

If you're into really long videos, have at it :)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

BAPTIZED!

Awesome day.  Awesome experience.  Awesome God.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.



And I felt God's presence when, right after my baptism, the worship team played my favorite song of all time.  The one I made Tim play over and over on my laptop when I was in labor.  This song has me in tears almost every time I hear it!  And today was no exception.