2015 Year in Review

January:
 - We took the boys out to the River for a weekend, but ended up coming home early due to some less than desirable behavior.
 - We figured out that removing dairy from Travis's diet fixed his tummy troubles, and we deemed him lactose-intolerant.

February:
 - Jake gave Bo a haircut, but thankfully did not give his brother one too.

March:
 - Travis turned 3 years old!
 - We found out that we would be having another baby in the fall.
 - Blake was an assistant coach for Jake's baseball team.

April:
 - We picked strawberries at Sweetberry Farms
 - We had friends from out of town stay with us during the crazy hail storm.
 - We saw the amazing bluebonnet fields at Muleshoe Bend Park.
 - We told the boys and our families about the baby on the way.
 - We discovered Travis is very allergic to Oak pollen

May:
 - Jake graduated preschool
 - Lots of baseball
 - Lots of soccer
 - Lots of rain

June:
 - The boys took swimming lessons and became very proficient swimmers.
 - The next door neigbhor's house was struck by lightning and Jake saw the smoke and helped me make sure that they got out of the house.
 - We found out that baby number three would be another boy!!
 - We picked peaches at Sweetberry Farms
 - Still more rain

July:
 - It quit raining and all the grass died

August:
 - We took our first ever family trip (just the 4 1/2 of us) to Galveston for a long weekend.
 - Jake started Kindergarten
 - Jake started Soccer which Blake did not coach

September:
  - Travis started in the 3 year old class at preschool
 - Mama celebrated both boys being in school with a pedicure!!
 - Blake and Sarah celebrated 8 years of marriage (which finally put us married longer than we dated)
 - Lots of soccer

October:
 - Jake turned 6 years old!
 - We finally started working on putting together the nursery (poor 3rd child)
 - Mama and Mimi sat and passed out candy while Dad and Pops took the Pirates trick-or-treating

November:
 - Jake lost his first tooth
 - Dylan was born

December:
 - We somehow managed to decorate for Christmas.
 - Dylan lost too much weight and we got him evaluated for a tongue tie and got it clipped.

And that is the grand recap of what I mostly missed blogging about this year!  Happy New Years to all!!

Dylan has arrived

What can I say, between having a new baby and the holidays - things have been constantly busy around our house.

Dylan Cooper Hagler came into the world on November 16, 2015 at 8:14 am, weighing in at an impressive 9 lb. 13 oz. (just 1 oz. shy of matching his Daddy's birth weight - his Daddy who was 2 weeks late, as opposed to Dylan's 4 days early - geeze we grow them big!!), and measuring 21" in length.

It was a pretty typical C-Section birth.  We had him at the new hospital which is close to the new house - so it was an overall different experience, while still being pretty much the same as the last time in the routine procedure department.  I loved my Dr. - the anesthesiologist was a rock-star and kept me happier than I have been with an anesthesiologist EVER - my nurses were wonderful, there wasn't one single one which we weren't happy with (wish I could say that for the other births).  So yeah, great experience for Mama and Daddy.

Poor little guy though, being so big, he couldn't maintain his blood sugar levels very well, and so they would come in and prick his little heels every time that we would feed him in order to make sure that he had a level over "50".  Frequently he wasn't, and so we had to express milk and feed it to him through a dropper.  For about 2 weeks after we left, his little heels looked like over used pi-cushions.  Luckily at almost 4 weeks old, they have now healed up completely.

Both the older boys are absolutely enamored with Dylan.  Jake wants constantly to help out and hold the baby - and at this point is even carrying him around and getting him in and out of the swing.  Travis of course wants to do all of this too, but is limited to holding Dylan while sitting on a chair or on the sofa since he is not quite as, shall we say gentle and cautious with his baby brother.  Jake says Travis can carry Dylan around when he is 6 like he is... I told them that when Travis is 6, Dylan will just run away and not allow anyone to carry him.  I am not sure that they believe me that he will become big enough to run away from them.

   

Like last year, we hosted Thanksgiving at our house again this year.  Which meant that Mama didn't have very  much that I had to do at 10 days postpartum, because everyone brought all the food to us again!!  Speaking of bringing food to us, our amazing neighbors set up a Care-Calendar for us and have brought food to us 3 days a week since we came home.  It has been tremendously helpful, and it also gave good excuses to see people and introduce them to the baby.

At 2 weeks old, Dylan was down to 8 lb. 10oz. at his Dr. appointment, but our pediatrician said that it is nothing to worry about, that big babies lose more weight and take longer to return to their birth weight.  He still feels pretty light to me, but we will see where he weighs in at his next appointment on the 16th (one month, oh my goodness where has the time gone?). Dylan is sleeping pretty well, as long as he is being held... which has made things interesting.  During the day he is perfectly happy to sleep in the swing and allow me to get some things done around the house (like writing this post right now), but at night, he just will not let me put him in the swing or the bassinet unfortunately.  We are trying to reintroduce swaddling (which he abhorred for a while), and hoping that will help with the sleeping alone.  It is such a change from my other 2 babies who LOVED being swaddled, and once they were asleep would transfer to the bassinet.  Dylan = non-transferable. 

  

Giant cheeks at birth vs. at 3 weeks old much smaller cheeks

At this point, I am healed up enough to go up the stairs (yay!!), and do most of the normal daily things that I do - grocery store, target, cooking, cleaning, picking kids up from school... I would say that my life routine aside from nursing all the time, is almost back to normal - except for being able to go to the gym of course, pretty sure that will be a while longer.

Well, baby is waking up and will want to eat in about 5 seconds... so I must go!