Happy One Month Birthday Grant!

It is hard to believe that Grant is one month old already. Time has just flown by for us here in the Krelle household. The past four weeks or so now have been such a joy being with Grant. He is such a good baby. We love holding him and snuggling with him tons. He makes such cute little noises and just curls right up into you. If you give him a minute he will steal your heart for sure.

We have a pretty good schedule going now. It wasn't that way at first though. It took awhile to get into a little rhythm going. Grant nursed about every 2 hours during the first few weeks, but now we are getting 3 hour stretches during the nights, which is nice for me. I am a person who can get by with little sleep, but there is something about being up every two hours or less that left me feeling like a zombie for awhile.

Some of Grants milestones so far are that he gained his birth weight plus 8oz by a ten day check up. He quickly outgrew this little spit up thing that he was doing while in the hospital, and the echocardiogram that he had in the hospital revealed that his heart murmur is something that we will monitor, but he should outgrow it over time.



He loves to look up at us when we are holding him. He tracks object quite well and will move his head from one side to another just to keep his eye on the object. He does not seem to scared when Normandy comes over to give him a lick, which is good because she likes to give kisses. He seems to like bath time and is pretty relaxed when we give him a bath. This is something that Tatum loves to "help" us out with. He also seems to have pretty good neck control as he can hold his head on his own while we hold him for some good little moments. He can also lift his head for awhile during tummy time too. He also bats his arms and if there is a toy that they come in contact with he seems pleased.

We have gone on quite a few outings including: BOINGZ, the zoo, MOPS, movie night with the girls, church and grocery shopping. I have found out that the world doesn't slow down when you have a baby...especially when you have a 2 1/2 year old. So we have just tried to keep up with our schedule and Grant seems to fit in nicely :)



One of my favorite moments with Grant just happened last night. We were all in the bathroom singing while giving Tatum a bath. Grant was laying on the rug and I was clapping his hands together and singing. Grant got out a few noises as well. It seemed like he was trying to sing with us all and it was quite cute.

One final thought. I can say that the saying "they grow so fast" is true. I just can't believe how quickly Grant has grown. He is getting to big for his newborn clothes and it almost looks like lengthwise he will be out of the 0-3 months well before he hits three months. The other night I went into the bedroom with small tears in my eyes and Eric asked what was wrong. My reply was that Grant is just growing way to fast. I just want to cherish each moment we have.

Here are some photos of the past month for you to enjoy!

Introducing Grant William Krelle!!!

We couldn't be more excited to share with you all that on Sunday March 15, 2009 God blessed us with the arrival of Grant William Krelle. Grant was born at 4:38 p.m. He weighed in at 6lb 14oz and 18 1/4" long. He couldn't be more beautiful and we couldn't be happier. God is good.

Labor treated me well. I was able to do natural child birth as I did with Tatum. This time labor started at 4:15 a.m. and lasted a little over 12 hours. Compared to Tatum's 20 hour labor, this was a walk in the park. I will say that active labor only lasted for 6 hours this time. My admit time to the hospital was 1:50 p.m. and Grant was born about 2 1/2 hours later.

Eric was a great coach. He stayed by my side and kept me calm. There is no way that I could have done it with out him. One of the things I love about childbirth is how well we work together as a team. Our midwife, Lydia, was also great. Man she just knew exactly where I was at in labor and was able to be a great support for both Eric and I.

We are all doing well. Eric, Tatum, Grant and myself. The past three weeks have been great just getting to know Grant and bond as a family. Eric was able to take off two weeks which was wonderful for us all. Tatum especially liked having Daddy home to play with her.

I love having this little boy here to hold finally. There is just nothing like it. He is so sweet, the little noised he makes, and the way he just stares up at us it is just amazing. We feel so blessed to have two beautiful children to love on.

Here are some pictures of the first few days of Grants life.

5-5-5

Thanks Victoria for tagging me in the photo trip down memory lane :) This is a picture that I love of Tatum on our first trip to Neb City with her. Eric is holding her and she is holding onto Eric's Mom's hands and looking at her. The inscription on the whispering bench in the background sums it all up I think. LOVE

So here goes: Post the fifth picture in your fifth folder and tag five people.

1. Amy Bruce
2. Bruce
3. Elizabeth Lewis
4. Eric...using army photo's for any of his blogs :)
5. Anyone who reads this could also post on Facebook :)

I couldn't love this day More!

Man what a great day it has been today. Today I decided to have a day here around the house and to focus on Tatum. We had a great morning together playing and cleaning. Our friend Natalie came over for a quick visit and those girls were angles. They shared toys and would ask each other to see a toy if the other one had a toy they wanted. I fed them some lunch and they ate about every bite. And to top it all off the weather was just great outside. My neighbor Kathy and her son Christian came over in the back yard to play with the girls, which was so nice.

I just didn't know if it could get much better until we decided to run a quick errand to Target. I rolled the windows down on the way home and Tatum was laughing with pure delight. "Oh Mommy goodness the wind is all in my hair!" We drove around and turned up the music in the car...Matthew West's song More was on the radio. I can remember days like this in High School that I would just drive around with the windows down and the music up. It was great.

We came home and Tatum is now napping...first time in weeks she has napped for ME. I am now going to go take a bath...all by myself :)

Bono is our president?

Current Events 101

• I asked Tatum if she could say "Barack Obama", which she did. I then asked her if she knew who that was? To which she responded "the president." I was quite impressed as we have not specifically taught her about Barack Obama. Later, just to make sure, I asked her who the president is and she replied "Barack Obama." I guess she really knows. Later that night when Eric wanted to see for himself if she could answer the question "Who is the president?" She smiled this funny smile and laughed while saying "Bono." Now that's my girl :)

Random Tatum Funnies

• In the mornings when I ask Tatum what she would like for breakfast she usually asks for things like: popcorn, fruit chewies, or pickles.

• Tatum randomly at the dinner table said "Daddy it's not my lucky day."

• First thing the other morning when Tatum came into our room and had her head laying on Eric's chest she asked "What's that I smell?" I had no idea what she was smelling. She asked it again and I asked "Is it daddy's breath?" and she said "yeah...does it smell like his toot?" Poor Eric. I assured him that most people have one or two bad morning breath days :)
  

Cuteness

• Tatum wanted to know if the baby is going to hug her when it gets here.

• Tatum likes to get a blankie and spread it out on the floor. She then gets the shape tiles from her Candy Land Game and a small spoon and proceeds to "paint glue" on the tiles. When I asked her what she is doing she said "I'm working on projalects, I'm decorashing them." It sounds so cute.
  

• Tatum also likes to put out picnics for Normandy and Tavia. She gets quite upset when they do not want to "eat" with her.

Naughty Tatum

• Tatum has started to blame Normandy for naughty things that she has done when I am not looking. I can't remember what it was the other day, but Eric and I looked at each other and were like....she just lied to us. She's just two man

• Sometimes when Tatum does something she shouldn't and I catch her she buries her head into the carpet and covers her head.

January Updates

Well the beginning of the month was quite busy for Dr. appointments for us in the Krelle house. On Monday the 5th I had a midwife appointment. I am happy to report that things are going well for baby Krelle. Heartbeat is going strong. Baby Krelle is however head up and I am hoping that this is not a preferred position. I am psycho and really want to go through natural childbirth again.

I did decide to do the blood glucose screening test, which I failed. After doing the test again on Thursday the 9th, and four blood draws later, I passed it. False positives are totally why I was going to pass, but I am happy that I fell into the false positive statistic.

Tatum had her one year eye check up on Tuesday the 6th. What a difference a year makes. I remember how upset I was upon hearing that she would need glasses. I now look back at that time and I am disappointed in my own vanity.

There have been times this year when I wanted to pull my hair out because she had been so naughty with her glasses. Especially chewing the nose pieces off whenever she got the chance. Even to the point that I was in tears one day because of two back to back visits to fix them in one day. < ---Thanks so much to the good friends who listened to all my frustrations.

Tatum has gotten so much better with wearing her glasses and I have gotten so much wiser to avoid letting her wear them in the car. I am now so thankful that our pediatrician saw that Tatum needed those glasses. Had she not caught this when she did Tatum might have had permanent eye damage. We are forever grateful for her being so thorough.

I am so happy to report that Tatum's good eye is still good and needs no correction. I am even more happy to report that her eye that has the correction needed less correction this time around. We were able to use her same frames this year and just replaced the lenses. We did put the glare proof on these ones so I am excited to see how they turn out in pictures.

Tatum has a new room!

As you can see Tatum is very happy about her big girl room! Eric has been working very hard on this room project. We decided to get new windows in both Tatum's room and the baby room. Tatum also got new carpet, new wood trim in the whole room and a closet makeover, along with a fresh new color...lemon parfait. It is truly a girly room. It was so much fun to work on finding all the right stuff.

She seems to go to sleep better in this bed than she had been in her crib, which is nice. So I would say the transition has been smooth. She doesn't get out of bed until we ask her to. I am waiting to see if the novelty wears off. Naps are a bit more sporadic, but they had been for quite awhile anyway.

On her first night in her big bed we heard a "thud" followed by a cry at about 4am. Tatum had fallen out :( We did go get a bed rail that hides away during the day. She is pretty happy about that and likes to show it to people when they come to see her new room. It's funny about what excites her. But hey, I guess if I was falling out of bed, I'd be pretty happy about it too!