October: 1 Month of Fun

October just flew by. This makes me sad... October is my favorite month and I feel like I didn't get to do most of the things that we normally do that make October awesome. But, this was a very special October, so it made up for what we missed.

Roland

Oh My God... Roland is a month old already. What the heck happened?! I just want him to stay this tiny (and cuddly) forever. Maybe without the eating every two hours and waking up at night. But, I love him tiny and I just want him today that way. If Charlie taught me one thing it was that they grow too fast and quickly become uncuddly.
Well, Roland, a month of life. I'd say he's had a good month. At his two week check up he had already gained a whole pound, and I'd say he's gained at least half a pound more since then.
Roland likes to be held. It's hard to get anything done with this sweet little guy crying every time he gets out down. He seems to have a grumpy time each day: 7:30-10:00. He's a bear. A grumpy, grumpy bear. Oh well, hopefully he'll grow out of that quickly. As far as nights go: He usually wakes up once a night. Anytime between 2:30 and 4:30. Still, it could be much much worse.
He just had an ultrasound on his kidneys, remember the fluid during gestation? His kidneys look normal now. :)

Charlie
"Mom, can we leave baby home with the dogs." I believe this statement sums up how Charlie is doing quite nicely. Another one, every time baby starts crying I hear, "Ugh, I'm sick of this." Poor guy. These make me smile, though. We're trying to make him feel special every once in a while, but it's tough. Jay and I really need to work on making him feel good. He's feeling rather displaced.
But... This kid is excited for Halloween! He's been talking about it since August and it's finally almost here. Tomorrow I will have a little Bumblebee transformer wandering around. I promise to take pictures.
Charlie had a dentist appointment a couple of weeks ago. His teeth are perfect, according to his dentist. And he was such a brave little boy for the dentist. I'm so proud of him. I love this little boy more than I can possibly express. I had an awful dream the other night. He died, I don't even remember how. But I was so devastated. I woke up crying and it took every bit of my will-power to not go in and check on him. I cuddled close to Jay... I don't know what I'd do with myself if something happened to my Charlie....

School

So, I've been back at school. I'm very happy to be back to work. It's hard, though. I just keep thinking about how much I'm missing at home. Still, I know I can't sit at home without being a nervous wreck, so it's better this way. I love my job, anyway.
That said, I was pretty overwhelmed the first few days back, playing catch-up. And, my poor AP classes are like a whole month and a half behind... I really am not sure how to handle this. I'm going to have to skim over some stuff. But it's hard to say what I can leave out. It's all so important!
It made me feel special when students walked into class and I'd hear, "Yes! She's back!" I love that I'm loved.

Brooke

Brooke is tired, like 24/7. Still, I'm happy. Life is good. I'm not planning on having any more children at the moment though. ;) two is tough. My headaches have increased in frequency lately, but I think the reasons are pretty obvious. I have an appointment next week where I'll hopefully get a new, more permanent prescription for them. I'm thinking that later I'll also go in to get my thyroid checked. Might as well, since I've met my out of pocket for my insurance...

Family

I've got to spend a lot of time with my family this month. It's made me grateful to have such a loving group of people that I belong to. I love them all. It's been fun. We went to Olive Garden for Steven's birthday and the Melting Pot for Jayde's. We had our yearly Halloween Party at Aunt Pam's. I love that so much, I look forward to that every year. There's been Trunk or Treating with my Mom and a Pumpkin Patch with just my little family. It's been nice.
Still, there's this big, aching gap where my sister belongs. It's hurt lately. A lot. I wish she could be here now. I feel all the worse because I haven't been able to get in touch with her much since Roland was born. In fact, we haven't even face-timed together at all since he was born. Not until yesterday when Carrie was face-timing her and I butted in. Sigh. Brandy, I still cry some nights. I miss you lots right now, Sis. I can't wait to see you for Christmas.

Ok, I  know I promised pictures on my last blog post. I haven't had time to upload Anyang from my camera since. This weekend. I'll make a special post just for pictures. Sorry. Busy busy Brooke. Love you all, stay happy. I think I'll end this post with a howl. Aaaaaoooooooo

Meet the New Pack-Member

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I realize it's been a long while since I've posted on here. But, I've had a very very good excuse this time. Introducing: Roland!

Meet Roland Dean Funk. He was born October 2nd 2014 at 12:36 pm. He was 5 lbs 13 ounces and he was 19 inches long. Yup, he finally came. Actually, he decided to come 2 weeks early. And, you know what, that was fine with me. He's small, but healthy. 

Labor

If you don't want to hear the details of labor, please skip to the next section. Some people are curious about labor (I call them strange) and I want to make sure I record it somewhere.

Well, about 4 in the morning on the 2nd I felt very wet and leaky. Very confused, I ran to the bathroom, dripping all the way. To be honest, I wasn't sure if this was my water breaking or some other strange thing that comes with pregnancy. When you're pregnant lots of strange stuff happens to your body. So, we called the on call place with my doctor's office and they said they'd have the doctor call back within half an hour and if hasn't called back to give them another call. Well, we decided to take a shower (a wise move in my opinion). During the shower I had pretty much decided nothing had happened and that I'd go to school and see what happened. I didn't have any contractions or anything. I felt perfectly fine. Still, when the doctor had not called back, we called again and got in touch with a very very sleepy doctor. He said we had to go into the hospital, so, we were on our way. We left Charlie with Aunt Hastings and we drove to the Riverton IHC.

I was still feeling great as we followed the cute little pink and blue baby footprints to the labor and delivery part of the hospital. 

We got put in a room while they ran tests on the fluid leaking out of me. And we waited forever in that room. Seriously, school started while we were in there. I was glad I had called my sub and told her to be there that morning. The first test came back negative, meaning they didn't think it was amniotic fluid, but while we were waiting I started having contractions. They were about 5 minutes apart and they were pretty darn mean. So, yeah, we were sure we were having this baby that day.

They ran a 2nd test on my leakage and that one came back positive. We actually saw that on my monitor before they came and told us. It said they had pages doctor Empey (awesome doctor, just awesome) and we were to be admitted and I was to be given the evil oxytocin in my iv. Oxytocin is my enemy...

And we were moved to the very nice delivery room. Where we did some more waiting. Painful, evil, awful waiting. 

Pretty much as soon as we got in there my contractions were unbearable. I came in there with the idea that I would ride them out as long as possible because for some reason a natural birth appeals to me. Unfortunately I am a wimp. They hurt so bad that I started crying (which should say something because I am usually superb at hiding my tears) . I had no idea how long I'd have up work through the pain, so I decided to get the epidural. Seriously, if there was a timer or something that said that you'll be in labor this long, I think I'd be able to work through it. But, there's not and I couldn't stand the thought of being in that much pain without knowing when it would end. These contractions were worse than any of the ones I had had with Charlie. I was grateful Jay was there when they were that bad. I wish I would have tried getting up and walking, but I wasn't sure if I was leaking still and didn't want to make a mess.

So, in came the anesthesiologist. And, that was painful, very painful. It surprised me that it hurt that badly, because I don't remember it hurting at all with Charlie. Just lots of pressure. No, this hurt. And it hurt a lot. And that place on my back was super sore for the next few days. At least the guy was really nice???

I had Jay turn on the news, because just sitting there is very boring.

While we were sitting I started to get pretty darn dizzy and I kept falling asleep and my arms were falling asleep. Once I told my nurse she got me sat up correctly, I guess the epidural was just going the wrong way. It works by gravity, you know.

And then I I got put on oxygen, again. Like Charlie, Roland's heart rate started dropping with every contraction. I also started feeling a lot of pressure down below. My nurse called my doc and told him to hurry on down, this baby wasn't waiting long. 

He definitely wasn't. My nurse had me do a practice push, but it got him so low that we only did the one and we had to wait...which is hard when all you want to do is push.

Finally Doctor Empey got there, once avian, awesome man. I've decided that the best way to make it through labor and pushing is to laugh your way through. It makes it much more fun. He also let me touch the top of Roland's head. 

Well, 4 pushes later, seriously 4, and that baby came out screaming. I only had contractions for about 6 hours. It was a nice easy, labor, I guess. 

  He had the cord wrapped around him funny, but other than that he was great. 

I got to hold him a lot longer than Charlie, Charlie wouldn't cry and they took him away to work on him. But, Roland and I cuddles a good long time. It seems like we sat in the labor room a long time. 

Finally, they came and moved us and it was over. We now had another member of the family. And he's a sweety.

Sweet Hello's

As you can imagine, I wanted Charlie to meet Roland as soon as possible. He came that night and met Roland. It was really sweet. Charlie started out by giggling when he saw Roland. Sadly, it's not a moment we captured. I was holding Roland and Jay was trying to get his phone working. Oh well. It was sweet and that's all that matters. Charlie even held Roland, but not for long. He was really scared. We had a lot of visitors that night. Each one was excited to see the little guy.

Then, it was 2 days of hospital boredom. We almost got out of there a day early, but the pediatrician thought Roland was too tiny and wanted to keep measuring his blood sugar over he next day. It turned out for the best anyway, he wasn't peeing correctly and we needed to get set up with a feeding supplement anyway.

Home

Ever since we've been home. Roland is a good baby. Usually he gives us a good stretch of sleep. 5-6 hrs. Some nights aren't that nice, but I don't think I could fairly ask for much better. I mean, that's a long stretch of time. He really doesn't cry very often, he's a mellow mellow baby. 

My biggest problem has been myself. I cannot sit still, I just cannot.

School hasn't really helped a whole lot. I still have to do all of the planning and all of the grading. Plus I have to put attendance in. And, now this is not required, but I've also been in twice to help students make up some tests. I'm too nice. But, it's really my problem. Being home is so hard. I've loved the time with the boys, but I really want to go back to work. So, I'll be going back on Tuesday. That'll give me nearly 3 weeks, I've used 10 sick days. It's not what everyone else considers ideal, but I'm not everyone else. I stress more at home than I would at work. As Brandy said, Roland has a loving place to go while I'm working and I'll feel better being busy.

Fall Fun

We went up to the Unitas last weekend with our 1 week old and our 3 year old. Jay has a project for Geology that requires a pretty involved study of the geology of a nearby place. So, we decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and go look at the pretty leaves changing colors and study the geology of the Uintas. The leaves were pretty, but I wanted to get some family photos while we were there. I love fall photos. Sadly, it was way too cold to get Roland out of the car. So, we mostly stayed in the car. The geology thing was fascinating. I could really have some fun with that kind of thing. I really could. Still, I'm glad I don't have to write a report about it. 

Once we got up to a certain elevation it started snowing. And hard. We were driving through at least 2-3 inches of snow at one point. Fascinating. And mirror lake was just a blanket of snow. I was very glad to get back to the non-snowy valley. Snow is always more beautiful when you know home is still nice and warm.

I promise I will get some pictures of Uintas up ASAP. I just haven't gone through my camera yet.

Well, this post has been long enough, I believe. I'll probably have more to say about stuff later. Adios.