Easter

The girls Easter baskets.

Lovey, Sittre Paige,

the bunny cake and Pops

The camera hog.

My handsome husband and beautiful girls.

The SISTERS.

Here are some of our Easter pictures. The girls were beautiful in their dresses made by my awesome Aunt Debra. We had a wonderful Sunday and even left Stella in the nursery so we could worship. Jared and I really wanted to be able to sit in church, after nearly 3 months of not being able to go, and just worship. Plus its a lot easier to let the second one go.....I mean, that sounds horrible but with Sittre Paige we were so cautious and always wanted to have our eyes on her and I guess you just know with the second one that they are fine and your just in the other room if they need you but we still missed her and ran to get her after church was over. Actually I ran to get her after the message, didn't make it all the way but maybe next week. Anyway, we hunted eggs all day, had a great Easter lunch and ate the "bunny cake" that Pops and Lovey helped Sittre Paige make. Supposedly my mom made my brother and I this cake every Easter but I can't seem to remember it??? Sorry mom. But I trust that you say you made it with us? It was good, and we just had a day of family time which was much needed during this very busy time in our life. Hope everyone had a lovely Easter.

Certainly a Good Friday

What a Good Friday it truly was.
First today I am so thankful for Good Friday and what it commemorates, the crucifixion of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the suffering and His death. But the exciting part of today is that 3 days later he arose from the grave. He's ALIVE!! He was sent to die so that a wretch like me can live and I will forever praise His holy name. I am a whosoever......John 3:16
Second, our Stella had her 2 month Dr. visit today! Jared was off work so he got to go with all his girls today. God is doing some wonderful things in our baby right now. She weighed in at 9 pds 11 ounces, in our eyes our preemie is huge!! She is certainly catching up fast! Her sister weighed around 11 pounds at this age so Stella is right on track. Her length is 20 3/4 inches. Stella is finally on the charts and in the 12% range. Which is awesome considering last visit she wasn't even on the charts! The dr. asked us all the questions he would a regular baby at 2 months and she passed with flying colors!! Well as much as they can do at 2 months, which would be staying awake more, becoming alert, holding the head up, smiling, and some cooing. She is doing all those! Praise! The prayers are working, and I never once doubted the wouldn't! We are not giving Stella the chance to be remotely behind! The Dr. also said the true test to see how caught up she is will be her 4 month checkup because she should be doing lots more then, so we shall see, but we know she's in God's grasp and we couldn't be more proud of this baby! She will continue to be on the preemie formula, Neosure, until her 4 month visit. She needs the extra nutrition that it gives a little longer. She is still on a vitamin daily and the Dr. put us on Zantac to help her acid reflux and some of the heartburn she is possibly feeling. The saddest part of the visit was the shots. FOUR! I mean if that doesn't break your heart! Jared and I both had tears in our eyes. For a baby that only cries when shes hungry, if even that, we were feeling her pain! We haven't even heard her cry that hard before! She's so sweet, it was really hard! Our sadness was broken when Sittre Paige started laughing???? What??? I said "why are you laughing at your sister crying, I mean do you want 4 shots"?????? I said "we do NOT laugh at sister crying, because when she cries it means shes HURT!" Sittre Paige stared at me and said "oh". Jared and I came to the conclusion that since Stella rarely cries, that Sittre Paige apparently didn't know what reaction to take to that???!!! She does now. She's hilarious and couldn't be more funny at 3 years old! She cries on the soccer field and laughs in the Dr. office.....should that not be turned around?
Well, I am off to bed, getting ready for an "exciting" soccer game in the morning. Thanks for the prayers!! If you don't mind sending one out for SP in the morning.....as stated in the previous blog, this isn't really her "thing".

Soccer-NO, Diva-YES

Okay, it has been a major chaotic couple of weeks for us yet VERY exciting as well. The past 2 weekends I have been a bridesmaid in 2 wonderful friends weddings, and in one of those, Sittre Paige was the flowergirl, and also Sittre Paige had her first soccer game. Now, I should mention, we NEVER thought that soccer would be her thing, but we thought it would be a fun thing she could do with her friends to run around and just get out of the house. So we signed her up and long story short, Jared became the coach......yep. Jared is the soccer coach. I am very supportive of my husband, but had to laugh when he turned to me and said, "wait I don't know anything about soccer". So its been a learning experience for both he and Sittre Paige. Well, back to the first game, yea, we found out quickly that Sittre Paige is NOT an athlete. Poor thing, she inherited that from me, her mother. She cried the WHOLE game and stood in the middle of the field saying "they won't give me the ball"!!!. She did finally start running when Mrs. Kim, the OTHER teams coach held her hand!!! Now, at the time I couldn't have been more frustrated with her. I didn't understand, why she just didn't run back and forth down the field. I didn't care if she kicked the ball or even scored a goal, I really just wanted her to run around. But apparently thats not her thing. Now my friend Staci's daughter, Kenley Grace, is on the team and Staci found all of my frustration and Sittre Paige's crying very funny. She was laughing the whole time and I was upset the whole time. So needless to say, soccer is NOT something we will pursue with Sittre Paige. And coaching is NOT something Jared will pursue atleast not coaching his own daughter! But I posted a picture of the team right before Sittre Paige had her meltdown. That same day, Sittre Paige had to be a flowergirl in one of my best friends wedding, Lauren. I had prayed so hard all week that she would cooperate. There was another little girl who was also a flowergirl, so I knew she would do good with someone else walking down the aisle with her. After a long day of taking pictures, it was time for the wedding and she did great. Although she didn't throw her flowers because she held the other flowergirls hand, they both did so good. I posted pictures of them together. They were so cute together and got along great, her mom, Lori Mercer, is a photographer and took some fabulous pictures of Sittre Paige for me. So to wrap this up, I have embraced what my child is.........a major DIVA who can't play soccer!! She is ALL girl with little to none athletic skills, and who can blame her......look at her mom!

Lastly, both Lauren and Melissa were truly 2 of the most beautiful brides I have ever seen. It was an honor to be in both weddings and have such wonderful friends.

Stella has her 2 month Dr. appt on Good Friday so I will update her progress then. But so far she is still growing and doing great. My friend Staci brought over her new baby, Hudson, over to the house so we could compare size because I am obsessed with knowing if Stella is catching up with other babies so I posted a picture of them together. They are 5 weeks apart and I would say that Stella is holding her own for being a 34 week preemie! They are pretty much the same size and were both pretty much not happy about having their picture made!!

Sisters

Well as promised, here are some pictures of Stella that were taken around our house. Sittre Paige had to get in on some of the action and get her picture taken as well. She LOVES the camera and gets upset if she isn't in a picture! Stella is doing really great, growing everyday, staying way more alert and its so unreal to think that today she is 2 months old!! We are so ready to introduce her to the world on Easter. I have a wonderful relative, Aunt Debra who made the girls matching Easter dresses to wear. We are excited to all get out together! We do have another Dr. appt on Good Friday and should update then. Thanks for the prayers, we are all staying healthy.

Special Times

Okay, for those of you who watch TLC, I am a "Jon and Kate plus 8" fanatic and on a recent episode it showed how Jon and Kate give each of their kids a special day for just that one kid with the mom and dad. Then I started thinking of how even though we only have 2 kids, our life has pretty much been about Stella, so we are beginning to make an effort of setting aside special times just for Sittre Paige to show her how much we love her. Tuesday night we decided to take her to the carnival in Trussville and she had a blast. She rode everything....twice.....even the alligator rollercoaster. I think my heart was in my stomach because I am a little nervous about some "pop-up rollercoaster" but as jerky as it was, she loved it. When I was watching her last night, laughing and having a great time, she is just such a joy to me. Sittre Paige is certainly my comfort zone child, its just been me and her for 3 years. She has really done a good job of transitioning and having to share her mommy time with another little person! She is such a mini-me and my little helper, and is just so deserving of these "special times" with her mom and dad and her grandad, Pops (which by the way if you notice in one of the pictures, Jared and Pops looking a little to old for the carnival but decided ride anyway? and to top it off raced each other on the big slide). I am hoping her next special time will involve earrings!! She is excited and actually wants her ears pierced like mommy. That should be an interesting event!

Also, today Stella had a Dr. Appt and another RSV prevention shot. She will get this shot through RSV season, so hopefully next month will be her last one for a while. She weighed in at 7 pounds 13 ounces and 20 inches long! I can't believe how big my preemie is getting!! She is filling out in the face so much and staying awake more. Still a great baby, and will turn 7 weeks old on Thursday. The Dr. said she is looking great and we will just continue to do the preemie formula with cereal and hopefully soon she can start regular formula. We go again in 2 weeks. On a side note, we have a friend who is starting out in the photography business, so she came to our house this past weekend and took some random "artistic" newborn pictures of Stella around our house. Hopefully I can post some of those soon but she did a great job and we finally have some good pictures of Stella. From the pictures its hard to believe Stella is 7 pounds because she is still so tiny? The more she grows, the more we realize she might not be looking like me, total bummer. However, the pictures do resemble her Uncle Jacob (my brother) so maybe there could be hope that I look like my brother, and so in return Stella will look like me! Who am I kidding? Stella will probably end up being another girl Jared! How is this fair? Anyway, you decide when I post the pictures!

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers, God is good and so is life at the Jones house.

3 girls + Dr. appt = All day event

Well, today was eye-opening. Not only with getting out for the first time with both my girls ALONE, but also Stella's 4 week check up. Technically she will be 6 weeks on Thursday but since we were in NICU we are a little behind. Okay, let me start off by saying that getting out of the house and getting somewhere ACTUALLY on time could pose a challenge. I realize I only have 2 and hope that it gets easier to get all of us a bath, get dressed, feed the girls, put them in carseats, make sure we have Stella's essentials and then get to our destination. wow. I mean I am laughing right now writing this but it literally took me from 10:00 - 2:15 to do these things.....and Stella's Dr. appt was at 2 by the way - 15 minutes late is nothing right??!! Now having Sittre Paige around has really become the biggest help, she is so much the "big sister" and wants to help me do everything which is working to my advantage, she is really great. So half the day was exciting and I haven't even got to the Dr. appt yet, which went very well. Stella is 6 pds 13 ounces, she is still 17 1/2 inches long. The Dr. said her weight gain is excellent, 2 1/2 pds in 6 weeks is a milestone. He confirmed she does have acid reflux, although we figured this out ourselves when the formula started coming out her nose after a feeding. Speaking of feedings, Stella has been getting 2 ounces every 4 hours and now apparently we have to drop back to 3 hours. Jared and I find 4 hours in between feedings VERY convienent for us, but he said a preemie shouldn't go more than 3 hours without being fed. I found this very confusing, considering the NICU sent us home this way?? But he said it might make for a bad sleeper later on? So he wants her to get 2 ounces every 3 hours now and then just letting her do her own thing at night and wake me up whenever she is ready to eat. So, I guess we will try this, even though I thought Jared was going to cry when I told him. You really don't realize how nice that 1 extra hour is to sleep or get something done because it takes us about 30 min to an hour to feed. Jared said we shouldn't ruin a good thing, but for fear of posing a problem later on, we are going to do it. She will continue on the formula "Neosure" for preemies with about 10 cc's of rice cereal to help with the reflux. He said not to compare Stella with other babies that are 6 weeks or anytime because since she is "preterm" she will be behind. I was discouraged by this because nobody wants their baby to be behind, but for example he said at 4 months when a full term baby should be rolling over, Stella probably won't until 6 months. I really wanted to remind him that I serve a higher power and that would be something a little time spent with my Savior would cure. But I do realize that he has to give me all the medical facts and thats fine. But it is something that Jared and I are in prayer about and hopefully will correct itself. Thats about it, she is still a great baby, and overall the Dr had nothing but good things to report. The prayers are essential and really appreciate them, so thank you all!

The pictures are of us hanging around the house, and then we took one of Stella next to a wipes container so you could get a feel of how big she is.....or how tiny she is. This was all we could think of to compare her size to?

Praying for Baby Hudson

Hello! Haven't blogged in awhile but found a good reason too. Please send your prayers to our precious friends the Evans. Staci is one of my closest friends and was there for me the whole time Stella was in NICU. They had a baby on March 4th, Hudson, and he is having some complications and he is now in the NICU at St. Vincents. We have amazing prayer warriors praying for Stella and now ask you pass those prayers to Baby Hudson. We totally understand what they are going through and know they would appreciate any prayers for their baby. She has also started a "journey blog" to let everyone know what is going on, www.evansfamily5-hudson.blogspot.com
On a side note: As most of you know, having a precious baby is a little time consuming, we are so sorry we haven't done a good job of updating. But Stella is doing really good, she is growing so fast, its hard to believe she is over 5 weeks old.....although she is still the size of a newborn! We are thinking she is now somewhere around 6 pounds, we have another Dr. appt on Monday and will know where we are at then. We will blog that. Thank you for your prayers...please pass them on to Baby Hudson. Love to all.