My girls...

I've been trying to get some good pictures of my girls lately and this is what I've come up with...

I'll start with my FAVORITE of Ruby!!! I can't decide if I like it better in color or B&W....

Seriously, how could you not love that face and that little smile?

This one was taken a few days earlier...

Lyla, as cute as she is, has been a little more... um... difficult lately :) And I can't blame her really... she just got a new sister and she's just under 2. Tough times! And getting an almost 2 year old to take a good picture is almost impossible!! Our first attempt at taking photo's this day resulted in this...

Yes, I know, her pout face is quite "snooty". This was because we tried to reward her good smiles with fruit snacks and she was upset because we weren't giving her the whole package. Needless to say, we went straight home and tried later to get a good picture. Which leads us to this cute shot...

Anyway, I am LOVING having two little girls! They are both SO SO cute! Despite Lyla's behavior issues lately, she is still such a sweet sister to Ruby, a sweet daughter, and she is just such a big girl! She loves to help around the house with cooking, cleaning, handing me things I need for Rub, and everything else she can help with. She is already starting to speak in sentences and is really just growing up way too fast! We love our little Lyla!

And Ruby is just as cute as ever! It's funny that each baby comes with their own challenges. Lyla had to go straight into casts when she was 1 week, which was a little difficult and just sort of a pain. But it made changing a newborn really easy! So changing Ruby's diapers is a lot more difficult than I remember Lyla's being. Overall though, Ruby has been such an easy baby! The only thing that I have to complain about is the projectile spit-up/vomit issue! We have SO MANY burp cloths and we go through them each like twice a week! We had this problem with Lyla too and so I'm pretty anxious to get this phase over with. But she sleeps and eats well, she loves to snuggle, and she is already getting so big and strong! I'm interested to see what she is going to look like. She looks nothing like Lyla did when she was born. She has all that dark hair but I can tell it is already starting to lighten up a ton! So if her hair stays, I'm not sure it will stay dark. Anyway, I am anxious to see what Ruby is going to be and look like over the next little bit.

Having 2 kids does have its challenges, of course, but it's also easier in other ways. But gosh, I am just loving being a mom to my two girls!

Family Pics

My friend Camille took these awesome photo's of our family and I LOVE how they turned out! Thanks Camille!!

Ruby

Me and Rub

Lyla and Grandma Wright

My personal favorite :)

This last one is actually one my MIL snapped of us and it turned out so good!

Ruby Louise Wright

She finally came! Ruby was born on Monday, October 18th at 10:42 am! There really isn't much of a labor story since I was induced, but I'll go ahead and tell what happened...

I REALLY didn't want to be induced. I think it was the horror stories and the fact that being induced can increase your risk of getting a c-section. Plus, I really like letting my body do its job of going into labor by itself. Lyla was born a week early so I assumed Rub would come early as well. BUT I was obviously wrong. I was dilated to a 2, then a 3, then a 4 for about a month or two before my due date and my doctor was really surprised I hadn't had her yet. So finally when we hit my due date and still no baby, my doctor talked me into being induced. I really wasn't too opposed since we were scheduling the date for 5 days AFTER my due date. I was a little nervous and anxious as the date came closer but knew she had to come out some time! Anyway, the night before, Nate gave me a blessing and afterwards I felt really at peace with the whole thing.

SO, Monday morning we arrived at the hospital at 6:30am. They went through all the registration stuff and got me in my bed and all that before starting my IV. They checked me out and said I was dilated to a 5. Once they got my IV going, my doctor came in and just broke my water to get things going. This was at 8:15am. She wanted to see if that would do the trick before giving me pitocin (sp?) and she said she expected me to dilate about 2cm/hour. After about 10-15 minutes contractions finally started happening. I told them I wanted to wait as long as I could before getting an epidural. I feel like such a wimp because after about 20-30 minutes of strong contractions I was begging them for the drugs! After I got my epidural I felt SOO much better! Sometime before or after my epidural they checked me and I was at a 7. I wasn't completely numb but I was numb enough to relax. Nate and I were so tired by this point (we hardly slept the night before) that we decided to take a nap. Then, what seemed so suddenly, they came in and checked me and told me I was at a 10 and 100% effaced and they called my doctor to come for delivery. She was in the middle of a surgery so I thought that we had some time so I fell back asleep. Then all of a sudden my doctor comes in like 15 minutes later and said the surgery finished more quickly than usual. I told them I still wanted to nap and they just laughed. I don't think they knew I was serious. I think I just felt out of it and so tired and it really felt like I was dreaming. Anyway, they got me all positioned and told me to start pushing. After the first set of pushes, Ruby was already partially out. They had me wait until the next set of contractions to push again and when they came, I pushed and she was out! I can't believe how quickly it went. Ruby was delivered 2.5 hours after they broke my water and I pushed for less than 5 minutes! I seriously got lucky with such an easy labor! It made me really grateful that my water didn't break on its own because I'm pretty sure I would have been in trouble with getting to the hospital in time, especially with having to find someone to take Lyla at the drop of a hat! So, overall, my experience with delivering Rub was AWESOME!

We decided to name her Ruby Louise Wright. I really just love the name Ruby and I think it goes well with Lyla. Louise is after my grandma on my mom's side whom I'm really close to. Ruby already has a million nick names... Ru, Rub (pronounced Roob), Ruby Ruby Roo (said like Scooby Doo), Ruby Lou, and Nate's favorite... Ruby Cube (leave it to Nate to come up with that one :)).

Ruby is a DOLL! She has the sweetest cry... which I am sure I probably won't think that all the time. But compared to Lyla, her cry is just so soft! She is such a chill baby! She loves to be held and to just snuggle! She has a TON of hair! She is definitely a Wright baby and most of her features, if not all, are from Nate. We are just loving having her around and Lyla loves having a little sister!

Okay, here are some pics...

Waiting to deliver

Right after she was born

Rub and her daddy

So cute with all that hair!!

Lyla came to visit. She was concerned at first that I was in the hospital bed and was pretty nervous about it. But she warmed up pretty quickly.

Giving her sister some love!

First family shot! My husband's a hottie!

Ruby's first day home. Lyla LOVES to hold her, touch her face, play with her hair, give her kisses, etc.

Rub's going home outfit

So cute and alert in her bouncer!

Pumpkin Farm

One of the things I love about living out here in Illinois is all the great friends I have been able to make. Seriously, they are AWESOME! And when you combine that with a BEAUTIFUL Fall season, you get a really great mother/child outing to a Pumpkin Farm! A little over a week ago we decided to make our Playgroup trip to the Pumpkin Farm nearby and it was a BLAST! Everyone had such a great time! The kids loved everything that was there... the animals, the pumpkins, the things to climb and play on. Everything! And I got to experience my first apple donut. DELICIOUS! So here are a few pictures from our little outing...

Jaxon, Bently, Graham, Hudson, and Lyla. We're missing 3 other kids and there are a couple more on the way.

Playing on the train...

Lyla getting ready to jump off the wall (don't worry, it was less than 2 feet high) which unfortunately resulted in...

...this (see pic below). She cried when it happened but I didn't know why until we got home. Poor girl. It is STILL healing! It didn't bleed or anything but this is definitely her biggest "owie" yet!

All the kids just loved running around!

One of my favorite parts was getting to feed the giraffe's! Lyla loved it at first but then got nervous.

We were all so surprised at how long their tongue's were! Sneaky sucker went straight for the gold! I guess we were taking too long feeding him one carrot at a time!

Lyla bonding with the baby goat.

Cute picture of Lyla and Graham. They were looking at...

... this HUGE pig and her little piglet's!

And just to prove that we were really at a pumpkin farm and not just a petting zoo, here is Lyla playing with a pumpkin :)

And we're back!

Here are just a couple of recent pics of Ly. It still throws me off that she has such fair skin, big blue eyes, and really dark hair! But I think she just has the cutest face in the world (of course I do, I'm her mom!). I wonder if her sister will look anything like her. All I know is that she'll probably be just as fair. Nate and I are pretty pasty.

In my last post I mentioned we had a minor setback in Lyla's sleeping. I am SO PROUD to report that the phase is pretty much over, or at least extremely improved! I spoke to a VERY WISE mother, whom I consider to be a "super-mom" (my sister-in-law Candace), and she gave me very profound advice. As painful as it was, we just let her cry and fall asleep on the floor several nights in a row (there's a little more to it than just that) but the logic made sense and it totally worked! She got out of bed several nights as well as naps and would just cry and scream for like 5 or 6 days. The couple of nights she started to stay in bed again was when she was wearing her brace. She can get out of bed with her brace on so we thought it was just that she didn't want to go through the effort. But then for her naps she started getting out of bed but would eventually climb back in to fall asleep there rather than the floor! She still fought the whole going to bed process and would even find all of her toys around the house and all of her random socks and clothing items and put them away without being asked, all to avoid bed. So, I let her clean and then put her down :) And now she doesn't protest quite as much as she did before and stays in her bed. So yeah, she's made a HUGE improvement. Thanks for your advice Candace!!