Video Clips

I've been working on burning our home movies onto DVD's the last few days and these two clips are just from the last few weeks.  Camden keeps us on our toes and makes us laugh every day!  Sorry to those of you who may have already seen these on Facebook tonight...we have family and friends who don't have facebook (shocking...I know...) and wanted to see them on here!  Enjoy!



Camden LOVES to help out with housework. He likes to sweep, wants desperately to help cook (which I occassionaly give in to), points out the lady bugs to suck up when we're vacuuming (yes, our house is still infested with lady bugs...). He also loves to help with laundry. He pulls it all out of the drier and shakes it out. When we're folding it, he picks up each piece of clothing and states "Mama, Dada or Bubba" to make sure we know who's laundry it is - it's pretty funny to watch him sort the laundry at such a young age! Hopefully he'll like helping this much when he's 15 - I'm not counting on it!

New Sandbox

We splurged and bought one of those awesome/ugly sandboxes for Camden. It was on sale and we knew he would absolutely love it, so we decided to get it. We were right...he LOVES it!  He played in it all afternoon yesterday, until we had to force him inside due to the onslaught of black flies and unfortunately it rained all day today.  Hopefully we'll have warm weather again soon and Camden can get back outside to his lovely green turtle!

Scott is the best Daddy because...

There are thousands of things that make Scott an amazing Daddy (and husband!), but here are a few of my favorite things that he does...

~ Even though Scott has a full-time(+) job, he is always willing to help with night waking, and we ALL know that Camden isn't a good sleeper.

~ Since getting pregnant, he even encourages me sleep in the guest room occasionally so that I don't wake up when Camden does and I can get a really good night's sleep!

~ He loves to wrestle with Camden and doesn't mind when Camden sits on his head - even with a poopy diaper (OK...sometimes he doesn't like that...).

~ He can make Camden laugh like no one else.

~ He almost always takes care of Camden when we are having lunch or dinner together and cuts up Camden's food and shares his own food with him allowing me a little peace and quiet during meal times! It's really so wonderful!

~ He is very patient and doesn't mind coloring or reading books or building with blocks with Camden for hours on end.

~ He loves to play outside with Camden - trying to catch fish or frogs in the pond, showing Camden how to water the garden or pushing him on the swing.

~ I often end up changing the poopy diapers (although he's not afraid to!), which leaves Scott the lovely job of swishing the cloth diaper around in the toilet to clean it off while I finish up with Camden ... what a good guy!

~ Although I do my best to keep the house neat and organized (I really do!) Scott usually initiates the major cleaning and more often than not ends up folding the laundry since it is possibly my least favorite chore.

~ He's sitting next to me on the couch right now (not knowing what I'm typing) with his hand on my belly feeling the baby kick. That makes him a good daddy!

I LOVE YOU, SCOTT!!!!!!

He's Growing Up!

Camden seems to be growing up right before our eyes recently! It's incredible how many words he's learning, how good he is at following directions (when he wants to), and how many "big boy" things he's trying to do. We are most impressed with his interest in going pee-pee on the potty! The first time he did it was in February at 18 months old and we were shocked because we hadn't been talking about it or encouraging him to do it at all! In fact, he generally comes up to us and "tells" us that he needs to go.  He has done it many times since then, and he seems to be pretty proud of himself - we're certainly proud of him! He went 3 times just yesterday, and although it's usually just #1, he has gone #2 a couple of times as well. (Yes, I know you are all as interested in this as I am)! Maybe, JUST MAYBE, we'll be NEARLY out of diapers by the time #2 comes?!?! Doubtful, but I'm trying to be optimistic.

A Huge Sigh of Relief

We had quite a scare earlier this week and I’m just starting to breath easier again. On Monday we had an appointment with our midwife. We were about 16.5 weeks along and I had been looking forward to this appointment for a long time. For some reason I had been feeling uneasy about my pregnancy for a couple of weeks. I kept saying “Scott, I AM pregnant, right?!?!” He assured me that I was hormonal, tired, and difficult to live with and that yes, even though I’m not huge yet, I have more of a belly than I otherwise would have (such a sweet husband, isn’t he?!?). Actually, he wasn’t quite that blunt, in fact, he was very supportive and reassured me on numerous occasions that things were just fine. At the start of our appointment, I expressed some of these fears to the midwife and said that I’ve just been anxious for a couple weeks now to hear the heartbeat and know that everything was normal in there.

She suggested we listen to the heartbeat first thing so that I could put those worries to rest before carrying on with the rest of our time together. I lay on the table and she spent about 10 minutes with her little machine trying to listen. She kept touching my wrist to feel my pulse to make sure she wasn’t hearing my heartbeat on the machine. Camden was with us and was getting loud and antsy so she asked Scott to step out with him for a moment so she could really concentrate. We knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what. She explained to us that the baby’s heart rate was only around 80 beats per minute (at our 12 week checkup it had been around 160 bpm) so it was about half of where it should be. She explained that this meant there was potentially something congenitally wrong with the heart, that it was developing incorrectly, and that this was something very worrisome. She immediately called up to Dartmouth-Hitchcock to try to get us an appointment, and we ended up sitting in silence for the next 20 minutes waiting for the specialist up there to call us back. We were tense and nervous, there were tears and lots and lots of fear of the unknown. It turned out they couldn’t see us until the next day, but assured us that nothing would change with our baby between now and then.

We spent the remainder of that day and all night on Monday fearing the worst. Our midwife had painted a bleak picture, explaining scenarios ranging from the baby not being viable outside of the womb, to fetal surgery (I didn’t even know there was such a thing!), to having an early delivery around 32 weeks with a surgeon standing by to perform heart surgery on our newborn.

The fears flooded over us – what would we do if this child wasn’t “viable?” Doctors could always be wrong, so we would never terminate the pregnancy, but how could I possibly stand answering strangers questions in late summer when the cheerfully asked me “when are you due?” “Are you having a boy or a girl?”…I can’t even imagine knowing that my child wasn’t going to make it, yet carrying it to term – although we were preparing ourselves to do that if necessary. We were thinking through other scenarios as well…what if we had to deliver in Boston (a possibility they had mentioned to us) and live down there with our newborn in the NICU…what would we do with Camden? What about Scott’s job? What if this child did get surgery and survived, would he or she be able to play sports and be a normal, active child or would we be dealing with a medical issue for the rest of our lives? We didn’t get much sleep that night, and drove up to DHMC believing that any news other than this baby isn’t viable would be good news. We were prepared for the worst, yet obviously hoping for the best. We had told a few of our closest friends and family and they had been praying faithfully for us over the last 24 hours. We knew we would have support no matter what happened, and we knew we had to trust God with whatever He handed us, but we were fearing the worst. After an anxious wait in the waiting room I laid down on the table and Scott grabbed my hand. The technician got started and checked the heart rate right away…149 bmp!!! A huge sigh of relief swept over us, yet we were still nervous to see what the heart looked like on the ultrasound and to make sure everything else looked healthy. We spent a good 45 minutes with the technician. She was great, super nice and encouraging even though she wasn’t really supposed to interpret anything she was seeing. Throughout that time she checked the heart rate on the screen multiple times and it varied from 147-158! What a miracle!!!

Seriously, God answered our prayers. The doctor came in and said, “You have such a cute baby!” and assured us that she didn’t see any cause for concern. The joy and relief that we felt in that moment was absolutely overwhelming. The doctor left the room ahead of us and we just stopped and hugged…so thankful for this blessing.

We still don’t know what went wrong on Monday. Our midwife just delivered my friend Molly’s baby and it was her 4,992nd delivery (twins only count as one delivery and c-sections aren’t included because they didn’t end up being “her birth”). Needless to say, she’s very experienced and has listened to her share of heartbeats in her lifetime so it’s difficult to think that she wasn’t hearing it correctly. She just left our home about 15 minutes ago after coming over to our house for a home visit! She had to pick up her daughter on campus, so she came early and spent 45 minutes talking with us and helping us through the week we’ve had! To help us lower any stress we might be feeling about the baby’s heart rate, she taught us how to use her doppler stick and left it with a bottle of ultrasound gel for us to check the baby’s heartbeat on our own if we ever feel anxious about it! Pretty amazing to have such personalized care! Our baby's heart rate tonight was right where it should be! YAY!!! We are going to be monitoring the baby extra throughout the pregnancy, and we have another ultrasound in two weeks to check on it again. We're not completely out of the woods yet (because if the baby's heart rate is fluctuating THAT much, that's not good), but at least we know nothing is congenitally wrong with the heart.

We are so thankful and humbled this week. Life has thrown us some pretty crazy curve balls this year, and we are so thankful that we have God to lean on during these difficult times. We are amazed by the support and prayers of friends and family and are just hoping our little one won’t give us any more scares this pregnancy! I’m 17 weeks today and hoping, praying and trusting for a healthy rest of the pregnancy!

The End of an Era

It truly is the end of an era.  When I gave birth to Camden I knew I wanted to breastfeed him.  I had done my research and I knew of the incredible benefits to both baby and mother that resulted from nursing.  He was a quick learner and we never had any issues - in fact he was the baby who nursed every two hours around the clock.  Did this get tiring?  Yes, occasionally...but I never got resentful.  I treasured the moments we had together and the fact that I completely sustained him and watched him grow before my own eyes for the first six months of his life solely by breastfeeding him was absolutely fascinating to me.  A true miracle. 

Camden nursed multiple times a day (and night) through Christmas of this year (about 16.5 months) when we slowly started cutting feedings until recently when he was only nursing once in the morning (unfortunately, Camden is a VERY early riser so this was usually sometime between 4:30 and 5:00).  I was tentative to drop this last feeding completely...would it ruin the incredible bond that we have built between us?  Would he still be my little snugglebug even without getting "the good stuff" in return?  He has only been seriously sick once in his lifetime, would he stay as healthy without nursing?  It's hard to see your little baby growing up, but I felt like it was time.  Nursing while pregnant is not the most comfortable thing.  I did it for 4 months, but it wasn't very fun. 

I also felt the need to have a few months off and have my body to myself before starting all over again with our next little one.  Camden was less dependent on me than he had been in the past, and I honestly felt like he would be ready to transition if I initiated it.

So, the time has come.  Last Wednesday we didn't nurse for the first time ever.  He asked for it with his precious little sign language, but I explained to him again (we had prepped him a little in the days leading up to it) that "Mommy's nursies went bye-bye."  We sang a little song about it that we had made up and on Day One he definitely shed some tears (and I was trying not to join him!), but by Day Two, he asked for it, but didn't cry.  We are now on Day Six and he's doing great.  He still does his sign occasionally, but doesn't shed any tears over it and seems to be adjusting just fine.

My baby is all grown up and it's hard for me to adjust to the idea that he doesn't "need" me the way he used to.  I'm thankful we shared this experience together and I'm glad I was able to give him such a healthy start to life.  If I'm this sad about this, what is it going to be like dropping him off for his first day of school!?!?!  Ugh...I can't even begin to think about that without tearing up.

PS - Camden is going to love this post when he's fifteen!  :)  Someday he'll appreciate it though.

Easter Weekend

We had such a wonderful Easter weekend. The sun was shining, Camden is old enough to enjoy the festivities and (almost) our whole family on both sides got to celebrate together. On Saturday morning we went up to New London to an Easter Egg Hunt on the town green!

We had so much fun watching Camden run around and collect his eggs. Each time he picked one up he opened it to see what was inside before putting it in his basket! Luckily for us, he had no interest in trying to eat what was inside so he still hasn't ever had any candy...phew! Camden also had his first experience with the Easter Bunny! He wasn't quite so sure what to think! Although Easter has a much more meaningful story behind it than eggs and bunnies, it is fun to experience these festivities and watch the excitement on our child's face. Obviously, as he continues to grow, we will focus more on Christ's resurrection and make sure he understands that the other aspects of Easter are not what the holiday is truly about...although we will always enjoy dying eggs as a family and eating yummy candy!

On Sunday we went to church where I was on nursery duty and helped watch 12 babies with three other women! It was pretty chaotic, but we had fun. After church, we celebrated by hosting Scott's parents, his brother Brian and his fiancee Sarah, and my Mom and Dad at our house. Unfortunately, little Clara was very sick and spent the day in the Emergency Room so my sister's family couldn't join us. We missed them and are praying that Clara is feeling better!

Here are some pictures from our fun weekend...
Collecting eggs in New London...

Camden and Linden...

Digging through the bucket of empty eggs at the end...

Not so sure what to think!

Much more content on Daddy's lap...

Proctor Friends!

Camden would not sit down with the other kids for a picture...sad.

Quite a crew!

Showing off his belly...

Dying Easter eggs on Saturday night...he had a blast!

Pretty eggs!

Showing off the finished products!

Family picture before church...

Take #2! Scott actually initiated taking a family picture for probably the first time in his life! I'm so proud! :)

Enjoying a large plate of fruit before our mid-afternoon meal. He had a tummyache later!

Playing with Pop...

Walking with Uncle Brian, Aunt Sarah and Nan...

Unfortunately, I didn't take any group pictures after my parents arrived, but we all had a blast together!

Hope everyone else enjoyed their Easter weekends! Now, back to the NCAA Championship game! Rooting for the underdogs! :)