Comparison

I'm sure my girls will hate this when they get older, but for now I thought it would be fun to do a comparison of my 2 little ones. Many people have commented on how much Vivian looks like Emma, so here are some pictures to see what you think.
Emma

Vivian



Emma

Vivian

Emma

Vivian




At almost 2 1/2 weeks old it is amazing how "different" these two girls are from each other. I know that Vivian is going to change dramatically over the next few months, but Mike and I can't get over how different two kids can be. When Emma was a baby she had this light brown hair with a hint of red in it, and now she is blonde as they come. After only a few days Emma was very alert and colicky. She was awake most of the day and we had such a hard time getting her to go to bed. She had a difficult time nursing and so between formula, and trying to nurse, she had a lot of indigestion troubles. Emma has also always been very LOUD. The nurses commented on her strong lunges when we left the hospital, and she continues to prove to all she meets how strong her lunges can be. She has also been very strong willed from the get go. Emma also loves to laugh and have fun. At 2 1/2 years old she continues to be strong willed, energetic, loud, as well as sweet, obedient, fun loving and great with people. She has such an active mind and imagination. We are always amazed by all the new things she is learning and can understand. Since she is in her "terrible two's" stage she is sure putting our parenting skills to the test. She has been so good with Vivian, but has been throwing tantrums and having difficulty in other ways. Hopefully we can be patient with her and help her through this transition. What a funny gal. We sure love Emma.


Vivian on the other hand is as mellow as they come. She sleeps ALL DAY LONG! We have a hard time getting her to wake up. I know I should be grateful for this, but it is fun to actually interact with her when she is awake. She's becoming more alert, but it just depends on the day. She is eating so much better than Emma did, which has to do a lot with me being more prepared. Vivian doesn't cry very often, but when she does it is usually just because she wants to eat, or because she needs a diaper change. Mike and I laugh at this because Emma could care less if she had a messy diaper, and continues that habit today. I sometimes wonder if Vivian is doing o.k. because I am so used to my super-active first child. We take her to the doctor tomorrow and hopefully she has gained more weight. These kiddo's come to us so small, it is a challenge to get them to gain weight.


Emma

Vivian



It sure had been an adjustment adding another child to the mix, but Mike has been so helpful and understanding. He sure is a great father and husband. I know some days are going to be harder than others, but I just need to appreciate these little ones because they are such a blessing.

Vivian's First Week

This past week as been so busy. It has been wonderful having Mike home, he is such a great help. Emma is getting to have some great one on one time with her Daddy. Emma has been doing really well with the new baby. She loves to look at her and in is in the phase of pretending she is the mommy to her baby dolls and likes to wrap them up in blankets and put them to sleep. While she is doing well with Vivian we think all the new changes MUST be affecting her because she has been really "off" with certain things. Granted she is in her terrible two's stage, but she has been extra contrary and has been waking up screaming at night for silly things like wanting more water in her sippee cup, or wanting a book to read. I think she may be having nightmares or even walking in her sleep like her mom. Poor child, let's sure hope not, or at least she better not learn how to open doors EVER! Hopefully things will eventually get easier for her as we all get used to this new transition.


When we first brought Viv home she was eating pretty well, but then went down hill from there. She was just soooo sleepy all of the time, and so it was hard to get her to wake up to eat in the first place and then trying to keep her awake during her feedings was another chore. So because of all this she was losing weight and not urinating etc. as she should. The doctor ran some blood tests and luckily everything came back just fine. She is doing so much better now. We're still working on it, and it may take a little while for her to grow and get stronger, but she is finally putting on some ounces and eating so much better. Yeah!! We feel so blessed that it hasn't taken 3 months to get our second child to nurse! Starting next week I am going to be on my own for awhile, wish me luck. Thankfully Mike's sister Melodee will be coming out for a couple weeks in August to help out. It will be great to see some family, and it will be perfect timing since Mike has to go to Ohio on a business trip during that time. At this point we will just take things a day at a time. I know some days will be great and others I will be a mess, but I'm grateful for a supportive husband and loved ones I can call and vent too.:)

Introducing Vivian Dawn Sharp

Last Prego Shot



You will have to bear with me, this is going to be a very LONG, detailed post, but I wanted to be able to remember everything, so if you don't want to know all the details, just look at the fun pictures.:) Baby Vivian was born on July 11, 2011 at 9:13 p.m.. We were so blessed throughout the whole pregnancy and birthing process. Our Heavenly Father sure wanted her to be here with us. Like her sister Emma, Viv was induced pre-term, but for IUGR. For some reason my body does not like to grow big babies so the doctor thought she would do better outside of my body than in. We were scheduled for inducement at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, but due to the business of the hospital we weren't able to head over there until 11:00. There have been so many wonderful friends from our ward that have been very helpful in watching Emma for us. It brought a lot of peace knowing that she was being taken care of. We made it to the hospital around 11:30 and sat in the waiting room for another hour. Once we got to our room we got settled in and we had a wonderful nurse, Cindy, for the first part of our labor. I HATE getting I'V's, but she was very patient and good about taking her time and making sure she only had to stick me once. She was amazing! We waited for awhile to see the doctor and find out how we were going to be induced. The doctor recommended giving me Misoprostil first in order to soften my cervix, and then we would talk about starting Pitocin. We were excited about this option since with Emma we were given the Miso and it kickstarted my labor and we didn't' need anything else. Well, this time the Misoprostil was administered orally and for some reason my body did not respond well. Within 5 minutes I was having a lot of tightening in my abdomen which would not subside, and to make it worse I was shaking uncontrollably which made it impossible for me to relax in order to breathe through the pain. I couldn't believe that things were already THAT intense and was concerned about the rest of the process. We didn't realize there was anything else going on until the doctor and nurse come in, put me on some oxygen and informed us that I needed to relax because the baby was in stress and her heart rate had dropped. That was a pretty frightening time for us, but Mike was such a wonderful companion, and through the singing of hymns and the help of our Heavenly Father I was able to relax and the shaking eventually stopped. For the next 4 hours I continued to have contractions every 1-2 minutes. When they checked me next I was only dilated to a 3, and 80% effaced. We expressed the desire for them to break my water before starting the Pitocin since I was contracting so regularly and hoped that my body was laboring on it's own at this point. Things went REALLY quickly for then on. My membranes were ruptured around 8:00 and after an hour of INTENSE contractions (surges) my body was complete and we were ready to go. With Emma, her decent was very gradual and took about an hour. It was a time where I was actually able to relax in comparison to the regular contractions. When people told me that the decent was the worst part for them I thought they were crazy, I guess I just had a different experience with Emma. With Vivian I couldn't believe how intense the last 5 minutes were. I was so confused that everything was happening so fast. The nurse came in to check me which was very difficult since I was trying to breathe through a contraction that was lasting for minutes. She asked if I was feeling a lot of pressure and the next thing I know the doctor and multiple nurses are rushing into our room. They couldn't find the baby's heartbeat and wanted to get her out as soon as possible. I was really hoping for a nice relaxing delivery:), but it sure ended up being quite the opposite. The doctor and staff were wonderful and little Vivian was born within minutes. I felt so relieved to know that she was finally here and that she was o.k.,(and that I was still alive to be honest). We were truly blessed throughout the whole process, and we feel so blessed that both of our pre-term babies have done so well. We have been able to take them home right away and they haven't had to stay in the NICU at all. I think the natural labor has helped the babies recover better for us.


Mike commented that she looked a lot like my sisters Kim and Heidi


We had the hardest time agreeing on a name before she arrived. We had a few names that we were thinking about, but like Emma, we wanted to wait and see what she looked like. It's amazing how in sink Mike and I can be. I had been thinking about Vivian, but not too seriously. Once we were able to look at her together, Mike said that he thought we should name her Vivian, which just happened to be to only name that was coming to my mind as I was looking at her as well. She sure takes after the Pierce side of our family so to name her after my Grandma just seemed right.


Proud Papa


Tired Mama


Since she's been born things have been going really well. I am recovering a lot quicker than last time, and although she isn't perfect at nursing yet, she is making a lot of progress and has only had one bottle, which was at the hospital. It's nice being home and together as a family. I am a pretty apprehensive about the days to come and trying to work out a different schedule in order to include 1 more, but I am grateful for a supportive husband who I know is there for me. We are grateful for all the prayers in our behalf, we truly felt them and know our Father in Heaven was there for us, and continues to be.

What a cutie!

Fun in the Sun

This past week Emma has been having a lot of fun swimming. I filled up her little pool again and she was able to have a friend over to play with. They had fun playing in the pool and running through the sprinklers. (My personal childhood favorite) We were also invited over for a swim date at another of Emma's friend's house. This time we swam in the "big" pool. I didn't get any pictures, but she was having a great time. She didn't know what to think. She was wearing "floaties" and so wouldn't go under, but she was a little nervous at the same time. She went from wanting complete independence to wanting me to hold her. She couldn't make up her mind. She did want to jump into the pool and have me catch her though. It was nice for prego mommy to get into the pool as well and to cool off.



Yesterday Mike was able to go with the youth up to "Marble Falls". I guess it is about a 4 mile hike in and then back. It sounds like he had a great time. It looks beautiful. Besides the ticks, snakes, and bears they saw on their way it sounds like a fun trek to make as a family. They went a little ways further and were able to see some of the Giant Sequoia trees. It's amazing how many beautiful and diverse creations the Lord has given to us. Hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of even more fun summer activities within the next month before the baby comes.






P.S. Baby Update
My severe itching has subsided, now just typical skin stretching itches. Yeah! The doctors only concern now is how small the baby is measuring. We are all pretty sure it is just genetic, Emma was measuring small as well, but they are monitoring me twice a week to just check everything, and I will have another ultrasound this week to see how much she weighs. A lot of appointments, but I'm grateful that they have the ability to keep a close eye on how she is progressing. It helps bring peace of mind. At this point we are hoping for a full term delivery.

34 Weeks-

Itching

I just thought I'd give an update on what is going on with our current pregnancy. We really have no idea..... I know I mentioned on FB that my itching had begun again, but it is actually just coming and going in phases. With Emma it was constant, but with this pregnancy it will last for a couple of days and then stop for 4 and then start up again. My body just can't make up it's mind what it wants to do I guess. We continue to hope that this is just coincidental, and that I really don't have Cholestasis again. My last test came back normal so we'll see what my doctor thinks this week. They have scheduled me to start having non-stress tests twice a week, mostly because she is measuring small I think. This was a similar scenario with Emma as well. We have small babies. Other than that everything seems to be going fine. It's crazy to think that in a month or so we will be adding another little kiddo to our family. I used to think I had SO much time, but I am realizing how "unprepared" I really am. I need to use this time to get some things done and ready to go. Although we are away from home we have had such an outpouring of support from our ward, which I am so grateful for. It's nice to know that there are people we can turn too when we would otherwise be on our own. Another blessing of the gospel.

Busy Weekends

It has been awhile since I last posted and not for lack of nothing going on, quite the opposite. We have kept ourselves pretty busy the last couple of weeks. Since Mike had Memorial Day off we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and head to the beach. We went to Long Beach because they have a section especially for dogs. It was such a nice day and we really enjoyed ourselves playing in the water and digging in the sand.




Yesterday we went to a Pow Wow and had some good "Indian Taco's". Emma was a little nervous of all the people dressed in their regalia, but it was a lot of fun to watch her try and dance along to the drums. She did a pretty good job. There's always a lot of beautiful hand made items at these as well that were interesting to look at.

One thing we were able to accomplish last week was getting rid of our gophers. We tried a couple different things that didn't work, and had just been putting it off, but it was getting pretty ridiculous. We decided to just flood their tunnels and then once they crawled out we caught them on our shovel, packed them in Gracie's kennel, and shipped them off to a barren wasteland miles away from our house.

This may seem pretty crazy to most of you that we would go to all that trouble, but if you know Mike and I at all you would know that we weren't too keen on killing them if we could avoid it. We caught 2 gophers and luckily they did not move very fast so it made capturing them pretty easy. Mike had decided he just wanted to keep them as pets.:) I had to put a stop to the spreading of disease in our home. So mission accomplished. The only con to this situation, aside from the dirt patches in our yard, was that I'm sure there were a few people thinking I was out abandoning kittens in the middle of nowhere seeing as I had these fellows trapped in a cat kennel, and I was dumping them off on the side of the road. It made me sad just thinking about it, but it unfortunatley happens a lot in Bakersfield.

Emma continues to learn and grow, and her new favorite phrase is "I don't like it".(Including the most whinny tone to go along with it.) She says it all day long about EVERYTHING!! Hopefully she'll start liking things again someday.:)

Murray Family Farms

Last year we took a day and went to Murray Family Farms to pick strawberries. We had such a good time that we decided to make it a yearly tradition. Every Saturday in May they have free blueberry pancakes so we couldn't resist. It was amazing how different it was this year from last. We thought we were coming around the same time, but the growing season must be different this year. We went to pick strawberries and came home with peaches and nectarines. The strawberries were pretty much all picked over, and we had some in our garden still, so it wasn't a huge loss. I wish we would have picked more peaches and nectarines though because they were SOOO yummy. I LOVE "pit fruit" season. Emma had a good time playing in their "ant" maze and at the petting zoo. We missed out on the hayride and the homemade blueberry syrup, but it was a fun family outing nonetheless.





About a month ago we went to the temple for a ward activity. The youth watched the kids while the parents participated at the temple. It was a nice get away, but I couldn't help worrying about Emma the whole time. She is a great escape artist, and very fast. They said she only ran away a couple times.:) (What are we going to do!) We were able to get some updated family pictures. Not the greatest, but they will do for now until the baby comes.


I finally took Emma to get her 2 year pictures as well. She does not like to perform for the camera so we were lucky to get the shots that we did. Funny girl. This was the only picture I could get to put on here, and unfortunately it was one of the photos we ended up not choosing. It's so cute I should have.