four

today tennyson is four.

he is a hoot to be around lately.

he's kind of a nerd, but we always knew he would be. 

(i mean, he was already dressed up as batman in the womb.)

we've really enjoyed watching him embrace his inner-geek.

he's a lego whiz.

we get him kits and he follows the directions and then takes it apart and reassembles it again.

he is so precise with them, and he takes great pride in his projects.

tennyson also loves star wars and comic book characters.

his favorite pajamas are outer space designed.

he's really got the geek persona down.

we're basically just waiting for the day we find out he needs glasses.

then his nerdiness will be complete.

he is obsessed with frozen right now.

(but what four year old alive isn't?)

we only get a break from it if he decides you want to watch despicable me instead.

he's a big fan of the minions.

i think it is because they speak his language.

he also is still the biggest mike and sully fan, and really likes to watch daniel tiger and old spider-man cartoons.

he still doesn't eat the biggest variety of foods.

but he sure does love his cereal and his "tennyson bread" (kings hawaiian rolls), and he eats bananas because that's what the minions eat, though we can't really tell if he likes them or not.

he recently discovered teddy grahams, and lately he can't get enough of them.

tennyson is a smart kid.

you might not know it because you can't understand much of what he says,

but seriously, he's a genius.

he's got all his bedtime books memorized.

and it only takes reading a new book once or twice before he can start to recite it.

he can spell his name, maggie's name, and mom and dad.

and he can write them, too.

he knows what input the tv needs to be on in order to use different devices,

and he continues to amaze us with what he can do on the ipad.

his high score on temple run is very impressive for someone his age.

and even though he loves his technology,

he'll always drop every thing for the chance to play outside.

he's obsessed with slides.

and even though he isn't very good at it, he likes to kick and throw around the ball with dad.

he's also a great big brother.

tennyson is maggie's best friend in the whole wide world.

the two are inseparable most days.

and he always takes care of bridget.

he lets mom know when she's sad, and will always tell me what he thinks she needs.

i'm eighty percent sure it's because he is so concerned about her.

but it might also be that he wants the crying to stop.

today we celebrated four by blowing out candles on the cake he didn't want to share,
opening up presents,
and following clues around the house that led us to chuck e. cheese.

it was a perfect day.
in his bedtime prayers he thanked his heavenly father for birthday cake, presents, chuck e. cheese, and a happy day.

happy birthday, dude.

we're so glad you are ours.

one month

bridget is one month old today.

she is becoming less of a newborn every day.

she is more alert when she is awake and she has more awake periods during the day. 

but she still is very much a newborn, too.

she still eats around the clock and spends a lot of her time napping.

what bridget is up to:

-weighs about ten pounds

-nurses exclusively (my first kid who doesn't need bottles!)

-transitioning into 0-3 month clothes

-hates her infant carrier

-loves the ergo 

-wants to be held all the time

-gets one good four hour stretch of sleep every night.

-eats every two hours during the day

we all love our baby bridget.

it has only been a month but it is already getting hard to remember what life was like before she came along.

we can't wait to start watching her personality come out in the upcoming year.

easter

easter is definitely one of my top three favorite holidays.

i love the simplicity of it,

and the reason we celebrate.

for one reason or another, it seems we spend most our easters in airports,

so it was fantastic this year being able to spend the day at our house with just our little (or not so little anymore...) family.

we spent easter saturday at church at our annual easter egg hunt.

it is always the perfect warm up for our kids.

and it always leaves them wanting more, so i was glad this year that the hunt was the day before easter, so i didn't have to throw an egg hunt every day for a week while we waited for easter to come.

easter sunday started with chaos.

our kids didn't sleep at all that night, so they were cranky, and fighting with each other, and fighting with us, and the youngest decided she needed to be eating non stop.

our house was a mess and I was starving, and after an hour of trying our very hardest, we decided church with our kids was not going to happen.

so we put them down for a nap, and tried to put the morning behind us.

and wouldn't you know it, a nap was all we needed to feel refreshed and happy.

the fighting stopped, our house was clean again, and the easter bunny had come to visit.

we spent our afternoon hunting down eggs in the backyard.

(thank heavens spring finally decided to show up!)

poor maggie barely had a chance to pick up an egg before tennyson's basket was full.

i guess next year the easter bunny might need to find some harder spots to hide them.

this year, the easter bunny left clues to where our baskets were, 

much like he used to do when I was a child.

tennyson was a scavenger hunt pro.

he ran from place to place and was always so excited when he found the next clue.

truth be told, i think he was a little sad at the end to find a basket instead of another clue.

but he quickly got past his disappointment when he realized his basket was full of chocolate and legos.

we spent the rest of the day wearing bunny ears, eating chocolate, and enjoying some much needed family time.

all in all it was a wonderful day.

for more video footage, click here. and here.

sibling love

every day when tennyson gets home from school, maggie is patiently waiting inside the door and the first thing they do is scream and give each other a big hug.

it's been a sweet ritual that i love watching.

today, it went beyond sweet and melted my heart.

maggie sat at the door waiting.

the two screamed, and hugged.

and then they both ran over to the swing to see their baby bridget,

and they both stood there asking her all sorts of questions (i'm pretty sure they think she'll start talking any day now).
just like that, she's one of the gang.

truth is, i've been a little shocked at how quickly tennyson and maggie fell in love with bridget.
they call her "baby bridget" and they just can't get enough of her.

the day that they came to the hospital to find that bridget wasn't there with mommy, they were crushed.

they spent the long week looking at pictures and videos on our phone,
and they each had a picture of them holding bridget that they slept with at night and carried around all day.
you can imagine how thrilled they were when one day mom walked through the door with bridget,
and she got to come home to stay.

a few days later, when i had to take bridget back to the doctor for a follow-up, maggie sobbed and sobbed.

i'm pretty sure she thought that when i said bridget needed to go to the doctor that she imagined another drawn out hospital stay.

she shrieked with joy when bridget and i walked through the door just a short hour later,

and she quickly asked me to "show maggie!" (which is her way of saying she wants to hold bridget).

the little grin she had on her face as she sat there and cradled her sister was one of the sweetest things i've ever seen.

maggie has this little fonzie impression that she does only for bridget.

she walks up, gets right in bridget's face, and goes "heyyyy!"

then she proceeds to poke her little sister in the eyes and nose and mouth, and generally be a bother.

but she does it out of love, and when we remind her to be soft, she gently strokes bridget's hair and tells her she is "so pretty."

tennyson has really taken to his big brother role.
he absolutely loves holding her and will ask a few times a day to "hold bridget!"
and he always demands we take a picture of him holding her.

he is genuinely distressed when she is upset, and when she cries, he runs into the other room to tell me that bridget is sad.

then he tells me that i should hold her, or feed her, or whatever he thinks she wants at the time.

the other day, mike and i were sitting in the living room and i was holding bridget.

she started to fuss and tennyson looks at me and says "mama, open your tummy!"

i wasn't quite sure what he was getting at, and i was thinking maybe he wanted me to put her back where she came from. maybe he'd had enough of all this fussing.

so i asked him for clarification.

"open my tummy?"

"yeah! open your tummy! drink the milk!"

and then he lifted up his shirt and made pretend gulping noises to show me that he meant bridget was hungry.

mike and i couldn't hold back the giggles.

watching my three kids interact is really one of my favorite things.

the love they all have for each other is something special,

and it is a bond i hope that they keep throughout the rest of their lives.

i love our little family, 

and i'm so grateful that i get to keep them for all eternity.

the story of bridget hazel

on march twenty sixth,

at exactly nine fourteen in the morning,

our family officially became a family of five.

bridget hazel fiske came into the world weighing seven pounds and one ounce,
and she was nineteen inches long.

we instantly fell in love with her.

that afternoon, bridget got to meet her brother and sister for the very first time.

tennyson loved her, but mostly from afar, while enjoying the presents bridget had brought.

maggie loved her, mostly from as close as she could possibly get.
if we tried to pass bridget to somebody else, maggie would get furious and start shouting, "no! maggie do it!"

however, it wasn't long before we started getting concerned about bridget.
she hadn't been even remotely interested in eating for the entire day, and she was grunting with every breath she took.
i knew it was something that was an issue because every time a nurse came in, the first thing they asked was "is she still grunting?" and then "has she tried eating yet?"

 around four o'clock that afternoon, the nurses decided we should send bridget to the nursery for observation.

while she was in the nursery, the pediatrician came to visit.
in order to help her breath better, the pediatrician decided to put bridget under an oxygen hood.
she was also given an iv since it would be dangerous for her to try eating when she was working so hard to breathe.
i hated that she had to be in the nursery and couldn't be in my room with me.
and i hated that i wasn't able to hold her.
but i could see how much the oxygen hood was helping, and it was clear that the nursery was the best place for her to be.

the next morning, bridget hadn't improved.
when we removed the hood for even the briefest of minutes, her stats would drop back dangerously low, and it became clear that this was more of an issue than just her lungs not quite being ready.

the pediatrician took an x-ray of her lungs which showed that bridget had congenital pneumonia, and the decision was made that she needed to be brought to the nicu at the hospital across town.
the nicu would be able to treat her with antibiotics and give her a cpap which would help her breathe much better than the oxygen hood would.
the news devastated me.
it was hard enough having her in the nursery, i was having a hard time knowing that i'd be stuck at a different hospital.

but i was once again blessed to have a wonderful nurse who talked to the doctors for me and i was allowed a four hour leave of absence that night to visit her.

the next few hours were nothing short of a whirlwind.
the transport team came and took bridget to the nicu,
and mike and i followed not long after.

not even five seconds into our visit to the nicu, we knew our baby was in the right place.

her stats were already better, the nurses took no time putting a little bow in her hair, and the isolette looked so much more comfortable than the oxygen hood.
plus, i was able to briefly hold her again.

it was agonizing not being able to hold bridget when she was under the oxygen hood,

and those five minutes i got with her were so sweet and so needed.

after our brief visit, mike brought me back to my hospital room, and i spent the night working on recovering so that i could get discharged as soon as possible the next morning.

once i was discharged, mike and i made our way back over the nicu to visit bridget.

it was a scary morning.

bridget was teetering on the edge of either becoming a whole lot better, or becoming a whole lot worse.
and the doctors really weren't sure which direction she was going to tip.
we sat there listening to what could potentially happen that afternoon if we couldn't get bridget on lower levels of oxygen, and even now i am so elated that bridget did start getting better that afternoon and we were able to avoid going down what would have been a pretty scary path.

as her lungs got stronger, and as the pneumonia started to clear, it just became a waiting game before she could be discharged.

we were waiting for her to come off her oxygen.

we were waiting for her to get up to full feedings.

we were waiting for her jaundice to go away.

we were waiting for her antibiotic treatments to end.

at the end of all that waiting, we got the biggest blessing of all.

we were able to bring bridget home.

it was the longest week of my life,
and having one of my kids spend that long in the hospital is something i hope i never have to repeat.
but we feel incredibly blessed that we had such wonderful nurses and doctors looking after her, that we were able to visit as often as we did, and that it was only a week long stay.

since she has been home, she has been doing wonderfully.
and besides the fact that she never wants to be put down,
she might just be my easiest baby yet.