Wild Thing

Carmen has quite the hair do some mornings. I love being greeted in the morning with her big smile & crazy hair.

Happy Birthday Brianna!

I'm working on our new desktop computer and it does not have all of our photos on here. So I can't put any pictures in this post. So I thought for a change I'd tell you about the day Brianna was born.

My year 2000 baby. Secretly on New Year's Eve I wanted to go into labor & have the first baby of the year. Obviously that didn't happen. My due date was Jan. 15. She is the only baby who came before her due date, everyone else was late. We didn't know what her gender was. We only had one ultrasound with her about the typical 20 week mark. She was a stinker and when the tech went to go look "down there" she literally crossed her legs. We saw her do it and she wouldn't move so we could catch a peek. But rest assure....mom knows best. After all this was my 3rd child. I was sure by now I knew the difference and this child was definately going to be a boy. In fact, we called her baby brother.

I was scheduled for an ultrasound that morning. After my horrible delivery & complications with Mandy we were monitoring the baby's weight so she wouldn't get "too big". My mom (who has been there for all the deliveries) came over to be with me that day. I was getting dressed like any other day & my water broke. I've never had that big huge *gush*, but I could definately tell it had broke.

The doctor's office told me to go to labor & delivery at the hospital. So off we went to wait.....and wait.....and wait....and wait. This is what happened with Angel. We sat around all day waiting for something to happen and nothing ever did. My water did totally & completely brake later on (that was the big gush!), but I never started having contractions. Very typical of me.

My midwife asked if I wanted to take it slow & easy which would easily take me into delivering the next day. Or if I wanted to hurry up & get it over with. I wanted to hurry up. Wham! Bam! Thank you m'am! Besides, the first two kids had birthdays with a 3 in it so it would seem fitting to have this baby born on a day with a 3 in it. They hooked me up to the pitocin and maxed me out right from the get go.

I remember watching Friends (7 p.m.) easily, laughing.....starting to feel things kick in. I remember watching tibits of ER (9 p.m.). things getting quite a bit more intense. In fact I don't remember seeing the end of ER at all. Shortly after 11 p.m. I was ready to push. We seemed to have no problems, except for a small brief second or two when she started to get "stuck". On that last big push I suddenly realized Jim was not at my side anymore. He was next to me on the bed slummped over. (If you don't believe me & Jim denies it, I have it on video!). He was thinking we were heading into dejuvu and passed out. The moment was brief though and baby came out just fine. They place her up on my belly & exclaim...."It's a GIRL!" My head shot up & I said "WHAT?!" (seriously, you gotta see the video it's great!). Jim is starting to wake up at this point, looking around the room with the expression of where am I & what just happened.

And there was our baby girl Malyssa. Yeah, that is what we named her. Later on Jim was honest & told me he didn't really like it. Not so much the name, but how I wanted to spell it. So we came up with Brianna (after my brother Brian) Nicole (after my father's middle name Nicholas). She looked like no other. Much fairer skin & blond hair. I kept telling the nurses that if I had not seen her right away I wouldn't have believed she was my child. But she is certainly a Peterson through & through.

Princess Carmen

???????

Sometimes I let the kids sleep downstairs. I'm just the coolest mom when I do. One of them usually ends up in the recliner. But I was perplexed to find one of them asleep in this position.

kids these days

Carmen is fascinated with cell phones. She is always getting a hold of mine. She knows exactly where I keep it too. She flips it open & "talks" on it. On numerous occasions I've heard her saying "daddy daddy" and lo & behold she has called either his office or his cell. (They are pre-programmed on there). So, of course, we had to get her a play cell phone for christmas. It looks like she's texting on here. Which she would not get from us at all. We have texting turned off on our cell phones. I've literally never sent one. So it makes me wonder if kids these days are just born with the built in knowledge of how to do these things. The way some parents are they might as well give their newborn their own real cell phone. LOL! I'm kidding....

Christmas

I need to backtrack a little bit on my blog since I got behind.

We had a wonderful Christmas time with our family & friends. We went to Muscatine the weekend before to celebrate with Carmen's family. We had Christmas with our kids on christmas eve eve. We always think we'll wait until Christmas Eve, but never make it to that. We are anxious to just get it done with. Plus, we know that we won't be home for the following days for them to enjoy their presents.

Christmas Day we always spend at Jim's parents house up in "Chicago". (We've called it Chicago for many years even though we go nowhere near the actual city. Although at some point and very briefly we do see the skyline.) Many of his family is there. His mom always does a wonderful job putting on such a spread of great food. And she's gotten quite good at spoiling the grandkids with presents. The whole family was not there, but we did have all the grandkids present. Here's a nice picture of them all.

I also got this nice picture of Jim's mom & all our kids. Look at how much Angel looks like her grandma.

Later in the day we always stop & see other family. Usually we head home after that long day. For a change Jim took the day after off and we went & spent some time with his brother & family. It was very nice to not have to drive up and back in one day. All in all we had a nice Christmas holiday season. I snapped this pic of Carmen in her little elf outfit. She was way too cute.

Welcome 2009!

Oh my goodness! If I thought I had plenty of blogging to do before the holidays..hehe, there's a whole lot more! And as much as I want to do it all now, I really think I'm gonna go take a nap. I'm feeling the effects of gettting up at 4:30 a.m. and hitting it hard at the Y. I have a triathalon in 23 days and I have got to move it into high gear.

I hope you've had a great start to 2009. I'm looking forward to what this year brings!