Roadtrip

Hayden is definitely a morning person, which is the complete opposite of Chris and I! He is all smiles when he wakes up and instantly puts you in a good mood, even when it is 4 in the morning. I was really excited and thought we had reached a milestone on Friday night when Hayden slept 6 hours. That is until the next night when he decided to remind me that he is in control and woke up every 2 hours.

Chris has been working down in Ft. Greely these past few weeks. It is a bummer, and we miss him desperately (okay to be honest I miss being able to hand Hayden off to him and have a few minutes to myself). It has been a little frustrating at night because Hayden gets really cranky and then cries, which triggers Tucker to get all excited and drop all of his toys in my face. But we only have a few more weeks of it. I give single moms (especially Sally Brown, who's husband is currently Iraq and didn't really have a choice of being alone) all the credit in the world, I could not do it.

Well we decided we needed to get out of the house and go for a little roadtrip to visit Chris. I was a little nervous because Hayden hates his carseat and screams for the majority of the time he is in it. So my mom watched him for a little bit while I got everything ready to go and she kept him up all afternoon. He instantly fell asleep in his seat and slept the entire way down. Chris and I played with Hayden all night, he stayed awake for a good 3 hours, and then we hopped back in the car and made the hour and a half journey back home...tear free!

Chris gets to come home on the weekends, and this is what our bed looks like on Sunday mornings. Hayden likes to lay in his arms, which then means that Tucker has to lay in Chris's arms. As you can tell the dog and the kid are daddy's boys, and I am the picture taker and buffet!!

Time Flies

Wow, I can't believe that Hayden is already a month old. Time has flown by and my days of pregnancy and even labor are a big blur. Hayden and I stay busy working from home, taking care of the house, walking the dog, and most importantly playing together. Then, when dad comes home, I actually get a few moments to do time consuming chores like make dinner and fold laundry. Who wants to do that boring stuff when you have big beautiful blue eyes staring up at you all day long!!! Hayden is such a daddy's boy and Chris has a magic touch...it is priceless. If he starts crying you just give him to dad and he instantly calms down!

He is starting to form quite the personality, and cracks me up every day. It is amazing how much they change from day to day. I love the picture above, it is Hayden kicking it on the coach...legs crossed and his head propped up on his arm!!

He finally got to take his first bath...a long awaited event because his belly button didn't want to fall off. 18 days after birth when we were at his weigh-in appointment the doctor finally decided to use silver nitrate to get rid of his stub! It seems as though I am seeing a pattern of Hayden continuing to do things on "Bunch Time"!!!

His bath started out great, and then it turned ugly very quickly. He wasn't to happy with Chris pouring the water over him and scrubbing him down. He gave me the most pathetic little faces, it just breaks your heart doesn't it!

Then he got over giving the sad faces and just started screaming bloody murder. Even after his bath he gave you little whimpers to remind you how miserable it was! Little attitude at such a little age :)

He's getting big, and weighed in at 10lbs 11oz at his 1 month appointment this week. So apparently his medicine is working and he is digesting my milk just fine. Although we couldn't get away without something going wrong...they found that he has a yeast infection, so on top of his squirts of medicine 2 times a day, I now have to give him more medicine 4 times a day. Oh well, it is fruit flavored so he eats it up and licks his lips afterwards! I don't know if you can tell, but I was trying to capture the smoke in the background. It has been horrible and there is an advisory to keep old people and children in doors. You can barely see a mile in front of you. It stinks because we can't enjoy our final days of summer. Hopefully it will clear up soon. We were supposed to make a road trip down to Delta tonight to see Chris, he has been working at Ft. Greely, but we will have to post-pone it until the weather gets better. Until then, he is coming home to visit us!

Our Baby Boy

Chelsey of MachC Photography posted our amazing pictures from our newborn session with Hayden when he was 6 days old. She did such a wonderful job and truly captured those breathtaking moments we had with our son during his first week home. Take a look at our gallery soon because the pictures will only be available for viewing until Saturday August 1st.

Visit: www.machcphotography.com/clients

Email Address: clutz01@hotmail.com

Password: Tucker

Access Code: bunchofmemories

We are all adjusting well and getting somewhat of a routine established. Tucker loves on Hayden constantly and is always sneaking in kisses! Hayden doesn't seem to mind it because we will catch him smiling as Tucker is licking his entire face!

Hayden has been doing well...although we've had a few hiccups along the way. When we were at the hospital his doctor noticed a heart murmur that didn't go away before he was discharged. I have no idea what I am talking about, but I will try. They did an ultrasound and x-ray and found that a valve hasn't closed off and his blood was pumping twice as hard through the valves. The doctor says that it happens to babies (mostly preemies), and they will grow out of it by 6 to 8 months. Last week at a check-up, Hayden had lost some weight so they did some test and found out that he is lactose intolerant. So if I want to continue to breastfeed we have to give him medicine twice a day until he grows out of it, which they predict will happen at about 8 to 12 weeks. It's not too bad, he is a trooper when I give it to him and is gaining weight like a champ!

He is developing quite the personality and is such a happy baby. This past week he has been fascinated with his tongue and loves to mock you. If you stick your tongue out at him he then sticks his out!

Chris and I are staying busy and are trying to stay cool in our Fairbanks heat wave. It has been over 80 degrees for days and they are saying that this is the driest July in Fairbanks history. This summer has flown by and proof of that is the fair is coming next week...that will surely bring the rain!

A Special Thank You

A special thank you goes out to my sister who flew in from Seattle to spend 10 days with Hayden and I (and the rest of the family!) She was such a big help in so many ways...words cannot describe my gratitude. She is a pediatric nurse so not only did she help take care of Hayden, but she also helped take care of me and show me the ropes! We had a wonderful time and we were really sad to see Auntie Amy leave, thank you Sis for everything, I love you very much. It looks like the Bunch's will be making frequent trips to Seattle in the future :)

Tucker has been adjusting to his new life, and is doing really good. He was a little scared of Hayden at first...he would get antsy when he cried. But he got over that quickly, and now only gets up in our face when Chris talks to Hayden.

My boys have enjoyed their nap time...yes even Tucker needs to nap on the coach! Tucker gets up with me when I feed Hayden, so he has been tired! Speaking of getting up in the night, I am so blessed with a good child....so far (knock on wood). Hayden has been great, and sleeps for 4 hours at a time. He is eating well, and as of Wednesday he already weighed 9lbs 11oz.

Grandpa and Grandma have enjoyed their new grandson, and as you can see we all can't smiling, even Hayden!

I think that Hayden looks JUST like his dad and I swear I was just the surrogate!!! I am glad that he got his dad's good looks, and who really wants a little boy to look like their mom ;)

We were fortunate enough to have Chelsey Mach spend the afternoon with us again and share her amazing talents with us. She took newborn pictures with us when Hayden was 6 days old. She posted a couple of sneak peak pictures on her blog...take a look at her beautiful work. www.machcphotography.com. She has two posts with our pictures on July 15th, scroll through her pages at the bottom to find them "Wordless Wednesday, Baby Love" and "On His Own Time". We can't wait to see the rest of her work, I will let you know when she posts our gallery.

It's a Boy!!

Hayden Michael Bunch was born on Monday July 6th at 6:03pm.

I am not sure if you can read his stats on the picture below, but he was quite the big boy! Thank goodness I wasn't all belly and was mostly all baby, I was a little worried there at the end when I was getting huge!! He was 9 pounds and 7 ounces, and 22 inches long...phew!! It was kind of funny because our doctor came in a few hours into labor to check on me and felt my belly to see how big she thought he was going to be and said he was about an 8 pound baby. Then when she pulled him out she was shocked to see how big he was!!!

The labor went well, it was long....but my husband was amazing through it all and seeing my little angel made it all worth it. Because Hayden was on Bunch time, our doctor decided he had been cooking long enough, and so we started induction on Sunday at 8:00pm. I had the second round at 1:00am, and contractions started about 5:00am. They continued to get stronger and stronger, but I wasn't dilating so they put me on Pitocin at 10:00am. Then Hayden still didn't want to come out quite yet, so the doctor broke my water at about 11:00am. Well the combination of Pitocin and breaking my water made my contractions unbelievable, so for an hour and a half I had contractions a minute apart that lasted a minute. My contractions beforehand were 40 on the monitor, but between 11:00am and 12:30pm, they were 90. At that point I decided I didn't want to continue like this for hours longer so I got an epidural (which was a good thing because I didn't deliver for another 5 and a half hours). It was smooth sailing after that, I told Chris that I thought it was cheating and fake labor because I could not feel an absolute thing!!! It was awesome, we napped, talked, watched TV, and hung out until about 5:00...we had a great afternoon together.

I then pushed for about 45 minutes, and out came this beautiful little guy.

The doctor said "daddy what is the sex," Chris looked down at me with the most amazing proud look and could barley even talk and then smiled the biggest grin I have ever seen on his face and told me that we had a boy. Those few seconds were worth the 10 months of waiting.

We stayed in the hospital for 2 more days and enjoyed all of our kind friends and family visiting with us and the opportunity to catch up on sleep and rest up for our new adventures. Here is a picture of our family (minus Tucker, who was at home waiting for us!) on the day we left the hospital.

I just wanted to share a picture of what I looked like a few days before Hayden's birth at 41 weeks. We took the boat up the Chena river to have dinner on the deck at the place where Chris and I got married. It was in celebration of my dad's birthday, which was on Tuesday....Hayden almost shared a birthday with my dad!

Bunch Time

Well we are past 40 weeks, and still hanging in there. Nobody thought I would make it this long, but this little monster is proving us all wrong. We have decided that it is on "Bunch Time," which if you know my husband, means that it will come out whenever it feels like it!!! I am feeling good pregnancy wise, I am just fighting a cold that is really dragging me down. But, we are trying to stay busy and have really enjoyed our time together this week. It has giving us just a little more time to get all of our little projects done and get even more prepared for our new bundle of joy!! We celebrated our 2nd anniversary last Tuesday, and as you can see from the picture below Chris surprised me with some beautiful flowers. The only downfall is that I know those lilies smell wonderful, but my nose is so stuffed that I can't enjoy them !!

I have been slacking and haven't posted the final pictures of the nursery, so here they are!!

Chris did an amazing job, and pretty much did it all himself so I have to give all the credit to him.

It turned out perfect, and I know that I will truly enjoy the countless hours spent in there with baby Bunch!!

I also celebrated my birthday on Sunday, which was my due date...but hey I didn't really want to share my birthday with the baby anyways!!! We had a wonderful day up the Salcha river with some really good family friends and my parents.

It was nice to get out of town and also enjoy the last bit of boating that I will be able to do for a while. But who knows, at the rate things are going, baby Bunch might give us another opportunity to go boating this weekend :)

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

Although I am reminded constantly how blessed I am, this past week I realized how blessed and lucky I am to have such an amazing family. My parents and my husband worked really hard to get all of our house projects completed for our baby shower/bbq and for the upcoming arrival of baby Bunch. My parents were kind enough to host Chris and I an amazing shower. It was exactly what we wanted, a chance to celebrate our upcoming arrival together and most of all a chance to see all of our friends. I want to thank my parents for everything that they did for us and to thank my husband for not making a peep and completing every silly task I asked of him.

Starting Sunday my parents went to the flower store with us and helped pick out a huge variety of flowers for the front of our house. My mom and I were strategically picking out specific colors and quantities for certain parts of the flower box (yes we are a little ocd) and Chris and my picked out tons of really random flowers. My mom and I bit our tongue and went with the flow, and it turned out great...the random flowers added tons of color and spontaneity to everything!

I tried to help as much as I could, which wasn't much because it is difficult to bend over and plant flowers with a huge belly attached to you! So my parents spent hours planting all of our flowers for us.

Although Chris wouldn't admit it to anyone that asks, he really enjoys helping out with this kind of stuff and jumped right in. Even though we had a huge variety of flowers to work with, my mom and I had a plan for where everything was supposed to go and Chris and my dad were good sports about following our crazy rules!!!

Sunday set the stage for the rest of the week and I have to spend a moment bragging about my wonderful families accomplishments because I am so proud of their hard work: my dad and I built and painted a picnic table, my mom washed the inside and outside of all my windows, my dad and I mowed and fertilized our lawn, Chris set-up and took down hundreds of feet of sprinklers, 2 trees got planted, Chris dug out a walk-way and hand shoveled in 1 yard of rock into it, Chris built stairs for the back door, Chris finished putting up trim in the house and then cleaned the garage after he was done, my dad vacuumed and steam cleaned all of the carpets while my mom and I mopped the rest of them, my mom folded all of laundry, Chris and my dad helped Chris's little brother stack 3 cords of wood, and did I mention all of the scrumptious food that my parents spent 2 days cooking. Yikes, I could go on and on, but I think you get the point, and no they aren't for hire!!!

Baby Bunch is also blessed because a lot of people came over and gave us some very nice generous gifts, and we are all set for him/her to greet the world! By the way we are getting very anxious to find out what the sex is, hopefully that will help me get through the labor :) The time is coming soon, only a few more weeks. We are doing great and both of us are healthy so keep your fingers crossed it stays that way for just a little bit longer!