Sabrina's Baptism

We finally had Sabrina Baptized on November 13th, 2011 at St. Charles Church in Greenville, Michigan. We had a hard time deciding on Godparents for our little girl as there are plenty of females on Herm's side but not a lot of males. Since we picked from my side for Emilia we wanted to pick from his side for Sabrina.

Here we are after the Baptism with Father Mike. Emilia didn't do so well during the baptism and was trying to find any excuse to leave. We are not sure what set her off but we managed to get through her crying and get sister baptized.

Here is Sabrina with her Godparents. We choose Herm's niece Elizabeth and Herm's childhood friend Chris Lauria. He also did us the pleasure of filling in at our wedding at the last minute when we had a groomsmen bail on us. It took us a while to decide who her Godparents were going to be but we are very satisfied with our choices and hope that Sabrina will be too when she gets bigger!

Little Miss Grabby got a hold of her cake as we were trying to take a picture of her with it during her party at Pizza Hut. It will be fun at her first birthday to see her with her cake if this was a preview :)

Sabrina recieved some wonderful presents in which we thank you all for giving them to her. This is her new lamb that says a bedtime prayer. She loves the softness of it!

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!!! Only a month late LOL! I keep saying that I am going to try to update the blog better but I just keep forgetting about it for some reason. Maybe because most of the people that read this are on facebook. Anyways I am going to try to do a couple of posts today and hopefully catch up with where we are in life at the moment.

Halloween went very well for us. We had pretty decent weather. No rain and it wasn't too cold. Emilia was Ariel for Halloween. Ariel is her favorite Disney Princess and since she had an Ariel birthday it was no surprise to us that she wanted an Ariel dress. The minnie ears came about because I was wearing my halloween pumpkin Mickey ears that I bought last year at Disney World so she thought she had to wear hers too. Emilia started off a little slow with trick or treating and refused to get out of the stroller. After a couple blocks she finally got into it. Then came the phrase of the night, "I gotta get more candy!" She would say this everytime we left a house. This was most definately our longest night of trick or treating so far. It was fun to see her get into halloween this year.

Sabrina on the other hand had a good time hanging out in her stroller. She went trick or treating for 30 minutes before Herm took her back to Me Jo's house. Sabrina went as a Baby Witch as Granny always calls Sabrina her Baby Witch. So we figured that would be the perfect costume this year. Sabrina held onto those 2 butterfinger candy bars almost the entire time she was out trick or treating. I think she liked the crinkling and bright yellow of the wrappers.

Overall it was a good Halloween and we are still eating candy a month later!

New Season, New Routine

Fall has arrived and with it starts a new routine for us. Since Emilia turned 3 over the summer has brought preschool and an extra-curricular activity. We are slowly getting use to the new routine. I haven't had to be somewhere in three years and I am definately not a morning person so it might take me a couple of more weeks to get into the swing of things.

So after Labor Day brought our first week of Dance Class courtesy of Me Jo. We found a living social deal that gave us two months for a really great price to test the waters. Well Emilia LOVES dance class so I think she is going to stick this out longer than 2 months. She cried the first week because she didn't want class to end. She now goes into the room by herself and doesn't need me to walk her back to the door. After a couple of weeks of dance class it was time to throw Preschool into the mix.

Her very first day of Preschool was scheduled for Tuesday September 20th but it was cancelled due to fog. She was pretty bummed out when she got up that morning and couldn't go to preschool. That cancellation also threw a glitch into our plans as Herm was leaving for Las Vegas on Wednesday and one parent needed to attend school. So Sabrina went to stay with Uncle Brad and Aunt Margaret so I could attend school with Emilia on thursday. Emilia had to show her very cool cupcake pants! She loves these pants :)

We can't start school without a princess backpack! Emilia did fairly well in school that first day. She asked to go home once because she couldn't go do what she wanted to do. But we stuck it out and made it through.

Here she is playing with the shape blocks.

We survived our first day of Preschool!

So far she loves preschool too. We haven't gotten pass the whining/crying when we have to leave school but hopefully that will pass in the next week or two. She goes to school two days a week for 1.5 hours so its a good start. Tomorrow starts her second full week of school and they are going to learn about fire safety. Hopefully she doesn't flip out too much on Thursday when the fire truck comes to her school. She doesn't like big trucks for some reason and hates loud noises ever since our neighbors started firing shot guns for target practice.

2 Months Old and Growing

I can't believe how fast time is flying with Sabrina! She is two months old now (well actually she is one day shy of 11 weeks as I am writing this but we'll stick with 2 months). She weighed 11 lbs 6 oz and 22 5/8 inches long at her two month check up last week. She is getting better at sleeping through the night. Some nights she will sleep 8 hours but not always.

Sabrina loves her swing unlike her sister :) Mema picked up this swing for $20 at a garage sale since I sold Emilia's swing. It is in great condition and retails for $140 so this was a great garage sale deal! Poor Sabrina gets the short end of the stick with all the used items and hand me down she gets. I was hoping to break the tradition that the second one doesn't get to do as much as the first and keep things the same between her and Emilia but I don't think its going to happen. Emilia traveled a lot during her first 3 years with 3 trips to Disney World, 1 trip to Cocoa Beach Florida, and a Carnival Cruise. Sabrina will be lucky if she gets 1 trip to Disney during her first three years of her life at the rate we are going. Even though there is a great promotion going on for January/February at Disney right now that we could take her at roughly the same age we took Emilia but Herm would have to play a lot of poker and win to come up with the money in time. I think its just the guilt getting to me that I can't do all the things with her when she is small that I did with Emilia. Not that I don't enjoy the everyday moments and make the most of those :)

We put Sabrina in bed with Emilia to be silly. Emilia loved having her in her bed and was a little mad that Sabrina couldn't sleep with her. She loves being a big sister and I think she would like Sabrina a little bigger so she could play with her more.

The next day Emilia decided to climb in Sabrina's crib with her since they laid together in her bed the night before. Emilia is definately a silly girl. She is adapting well to having Sabrina in our house. The only place where she struggles is when it comes to the strollers. She always wants to ride in the strollers instead of letting sister as they are her strollers.

Emilia likes to help out as much as she can - I have yet to have her actually feed Sabrina an entire bottle though. Emilia is excited to go to Preschool in the fall. We are doing well on the potty training business during the day. She is nowhere near being dry at naps or night time yet though but I think we are going to be trained enough for her to go to school. Unless when she gets there she gets too busy and forgets then we might be in trouble. Hopefully since its only 1.5 hours she will make it through and won't have to go to the potty while at school as she needs help getting on and off and sometime pulling up her pants but not always.

Wells that is about it in our little lives. Nothing too exciting happening in our house which isn't always a bad thing :)

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July Everybody! I hope everyone had as fun of a weekend as we did. Here is Miss Sabrina looking cute on her first 4th of July!

On Saturday we went to Millennium Park for the first time. Emilia had fun splashing on the Splash Pad and playing on the beach. Sabrina took a snooze for almost the entire 5 hours that we were there in her cozy baby tent.

On Sunday we went out to Long Lake for the annual 4th of July party that we attend. Emilia was our little fish again and spent the entire time in the water swimming and attempting to kayak. After the party we went to Brad and Margarets to relax by their fire pit and make Hobo pies. We are going to attempt to watch fireworks tonight from Alpine. Hopefully we will be far enough away that we don't hear the sound as Emilia does not like loud noises right now. Today was spent playing outside. Emilia tried out her new rollar skates and her Ariel slip and slide that she got for her birthday. Emilia has been working on potty training for the past week. She has been doing so well up until this afternoon when she pooped in her panties and swim suit because she didn't want to stop what she was doing to go inside. Other than that she has only had two accidents all week long so we are very proud of her. Hopefully she will catch on that its okay to stop what she is doing and that she isn't going to miss anything when she goes inside to go potty.

Its hard work being cute on the 4th of July!

Check out the cute crab on my butt!!!

Someone turned the BIG 3!!!!

Miss Emilia turned the Big 3 on June 10th. This year for her birthday we had a swimming party at the hotel in Greenville. It was an "Ariel Birthday" as Emilia kept calling it. Here she is dressed in her brand new Ariel swimming stuff. She even has Ariel arm floaties! We made a weekend out of her birthday. On her actual birthday we went to Chuck E Cheese where she got all her new Ariel swim stuff. Her party was on Saturday where we stayed the night at the hotel and went to Rockford that evening to watch fireworks for their Start of Summer Celebration.
She even got to ride the rollar coaster at the carnival.

Emilia loves swimming with her Daddy. She is our little fish. The only time she got out of the pool was to eat and open her birthday presents!

Last year Emilia hated the Happy Birthday song so we didn't sing it to her. She pretty much hates all singing which is the main reason she doesn't know her alphabet yet but we turned her onto the Happy Birthday song a couple months before her birthday using playdoh. She even told us it was time to sing and was waiting on us. She had the biggest smile on her face and was thrilled to blow out her candle on her Ariel cake.

Here is Emilia opening her presents with her friend Gracie from Mom's Club and her cousin Kiersten. This was a change for us this year too since the past two years she had to sit on Daddy's lap to open presents. Last year she didn't even make it through the whole pile before she wanted down. This year she just went to town on them that it was hard to keep up with who gave her what present. I think I figured it out to get the Thank you notes sent out. She loves all of her new presents espcially her Barbie "puter", her wagon and the bubbles. We haven't tried out the rollar skates yet and I think we are about out of bubble solution :)

Overall it was a wonderful day. Emilia had to have the piece of cake that had the Ariel figure on it. I think she picked at that piece of cake for 3 days and mainly just ate the frosting. I think she had a lot of fun this weekend and it was worth every penny. This was her most expensive birthday party yet but that was probably because it wasn't at our house and I bought her a lot of presents since sister was just born 3 weeks ago. Sabrina was a trooper through the whole party. She pretty much slept the whole time and had lots of people to hold her so Herm and I were able to enjoy the party!!

Welcome Home Sabrina!

Such precious little feet! We are adjusting to our new life as a family of four instead of a family of three. It is definately different trying to get two kids out the door instead of just one.

Here are some pictures of Sabrina Kennedy for the non facebook people in our lives. She is 4 days old in these pictures and currently has blue eyes. I hope that they stay that way :) She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz at the doctor that morning and is only 20.25 inches long now instead of the 21.5 inches they measured her at the hospital. Emilia shunk too when we went to the doctor but I don't think quite as much and Emilia had more a cone head than Sabrina since she was in the birth canal longer. So I can't explain why she is shorter.

I know babies aren't suppose to smile this early but I don't think you can deny this one. Sabrina is a pretty happy baby and I have gotten quite a few smiles out of her so I don't think they are facial expressions responding to gas.

Its not all about Sabrina so here's a picture of Miss Emilia. This was after we have given sister a sponge bath. Emilia wanted to take a bath in the blue tub but we convinced her to give Ariel a bath instead. Emilia is adjusting fairly well. There are times that she says that she is a baby but for the most part is doing good. She wanted to be swaddled the other night when I was trying to figure out how to swaddle again. I gave away my "moms on call" book which had the best instructions on how to swaddle and Emilia never broke free until she was bigger so I am back to trying to remember since I don't want to go buy the book for just a few pages.

Our Newest Princess

May 20th, 2011 at 7:56 am our newest little Princess made her way into the world. Sabrina Kennedy Siegel wanted to have her own exciting deliverly story as she arrived quickly unlike her Big Sister that had labor for 40 + hours. We definately did not think she would be arriving on Friday morning if you would have asked me the night before as I was feeling very pregnant still and at my doctor appointment on Monday there was nothing going on down there that we were told it might be awhile still.

However Sabrina had other plans. I went to bed around 1:30 am and contractions woke me up at 3:45 am. They were definately weird contractions as they were coming 5-7 minutes apart but were only lasting maybe 30 seconds so we hung out at home for awhile. My water broke at 6:40 am which we weren't 100% sure if it was my water or something else as Emilia was kind enough to pass on this horrible cough. So we called the doctor and he told us to go to the hospital. We left our house shortly after 7:00 am to head downtown to St. Marys. At this time the contractions were coming every 3 to 4 minutes and definately in a lot of pain. We arrived at the hospital shortly after 7:30 am due to everyone on 131 traveling at 72 mph that Herm couldn't speed and my contractions were every 1 to 2 minutes lasting about a minute in length. Herm wheeled me up to the ninth floor of the hospital where the nurses were like we need your insurance card and id until I screamed and then wheeled me off to a delivery room skipping the triage room this time around. There were about 4 nurses in the room and the first one checked me and said I was fully dilated and I can't have an epidural. Sabrina quickly crowned after that and thank goodness there were some resident doctors since my OB didn't make it up there in time. I did get to see 2 of my 5 OB doctors since Sabrina basically came right at on call shift change.

Sabrina Kennedy weighed 7 lbs 12.5 oz and was 21.5 inches long. Emilia was excited to come see her new little sister. She is pretty protective of her deciding who got to hold her and where in the hospital room. She even got mad the other night at Meijer and threw herself on the floor because Daddy took the baby to run to Walmart to get my prescription. Emilia likes to help out as much as she can and as soon as baby is awake she wants her out of her chair or bed. She likes to ask Sabrina "Whats the Matter?" when she starts crying or says "Baby's okay."

Here we are leaving the hospital on Sunday Morning. We were definately ready to get out of there as we were pretty bored on Saturday. Emilia shorted us time in the hospital since she was born just before midnight and this one gave us extra time. Since Sabrina was born so early in the day all of our visitors came on Friday at the same time so that left my aunt and uncle to come see the baby on Saturday and of course Mema and Emilia.

This is how we found Sabrina when we got home. We knew she was mad about something on the way home but fell asleep so we kind of laughed when we saw this.

Welcome to the world Sabrina Kennedy! And luckily the world didn't end on Saturday May 21st like that person said it was suppose to as that would have been a very short life.

And Now We Wait....

This coming Thursday May 19th is our official due date for Baby girl #2. The past 40 weeks have been long espcially the last 12 weeks when I was developed gestational diabetes. I was lucky enough to be able to control it with diet and exercise and didn't need insulin. Thank goodness because poking my finger 4 times a day was hard enough that I can't imagine if I had to give myself shots.

So here we are 2 days away from our due date. Will the baby come on time? Probably not espcially after my doctor appointment yesterday. I have barely started dilating so the doctor thinks its still going to be awhile. She also said that it might be another slow, long labor like I had with Emilia once I finally start having contractions. I was in labor with Emilia for about 43 hours so it will be interesting to see if this one follows the same route. I really hope not!

It is likely that I am going to go overdue with this kid and even with gestational diabetes the doctors are going to let me. My original due date was May 26th but they moved it forward a week after I had an early ultrasound at 12 weeks since I was measuring bigger and I was still measuring a week ahead at my 22 week ultrasound so I was trying to be hopeful that she would come around the May 19th date. So now its just a wait and see when she wants to make her appearance into the world.

We have been working hard on our house for the past month and a half or so. It took us awhile to determine where we were going to put the new baby. We could have either let the girls share a room, move Emilia downstairs, move both of them downstairs, or give up our master bedroom and we move downstairs. After some long thinking we decided to move downstairs and keep the girls upstairs. So Herm and I are living in a tiny room downstairs where both girls have bigger rooms then us, but our basement is only partially finished with no bathroom. So it seemed to be the most logical for us to move.

We bought a full size mattress for Emilia's bed and finally converted it from the toddler bed to the full size option with the bed rails that Grandma and Grandpa Siegel bought her for 2nd birthday. She loves her big girl bed and picked out Tinker Bell bedding. All of the baby Mickey and Friends came down off the walls in their place went Tink and her fairy friends. We moved the rocking chair, changing table and dresser across the hall to Sister's room which freed up a lot of space in Emilia's room to play. Does she play in there not really but maybe someday.

It took me awhile to decide on a theme for sister's room. Originally I was trying to find crib bedding to match our old ocean blue walls so I didn't have to paint again but I never did find anything that I liked so I went with the girly princess decor. It was nice finding out the sex of the baby this time so I could go girly with the nursery instead of netural like I had to with Emilia's room. We bought a brand new convertible crib since we converted Emilia's bed for her. We priced both options on buying a new crib vs. buying Emilia a new bed and it came out to be about the same. We decided to go the crib route so at least sister could have something new instead of getting everything used.
Here is a shot of the rest of the nursery with the changing table and dresser and better look at the princess border. So we are ready for sister to come. The room is finally complete after Herm hung the window blinds last night, the car seat is installed in both of our cars and the girls bags are packed for when she does make her appearance. I am hoping to finally get around to packing my hospital bag today.
Here is our brand new double stroller! A Baby Jogger City Mini! I debated for months on if I needed a double. First I bought stroller links to hook together 2 graco umbrella style strollers but realized that is going to be a pain when I am by myself to hook and unhook the strollers when I am done. I was limited on options as the stroller had to fit in the trunk of my G6. This stroller fits in my trunk with a lot of room to spare. The only bad thing about it is there is not much storage space. I like a stroller with lots of space for things which is probably why my Graco Quattro Travel System was my favorite stroller with Emilia even though it was heavy and took up all of my trunk. I looked at the double version of this stroller but there was no way it would fit in my trunk. So I think I made a good choice with my City Mini. It is lightweight at 26 lbs, folds easy, and is the number one stroller from the offsite rental companies at Disney World. Plus I got a steal of a deal on it by buying the 2010 model for 25% off then buying a 2011 model. This stroller is always excluded from discounts at Babies R Us so when I saw it clearanced out on AlbeeBaby.com I had to jump on it.

Well that is where we are at here in the Siegel House. Emilia is growing like a weed and will be 3 in less than a month. It is amazing how time flies. We are hoping that Emilia will show some more interest in potty training after her birthday so she can go to preschool this fall and we don't lose our deposit but we'll see. She hasn't fully grasped the concept yet. She knows sometimes after she goes but never tells us before she goes. We have one sticker on the potty chart and hope to get down to business and start adding to it after she turns 3 and sister has been here for a little bit.

Well I have rambled on long enough for now. Here's to hoping that I can update this again soon when sister makes her appearance in the world!

Walt Disney World - Day 7

September 22nd, 2010

Late start on our morning since we stayed out so late last night. I don't think that Emilia went to bed until well after 1 am. We arrived at Epcot around 11:00 or so. Herm went and grabbed us some fast passes for Test Track and then we made our way to the World Showcase with a stop at the Baby Center along the way. We first went to the Mexico Pavilion to ride Gran Fiesta as we have never done that before. We got Emilia her mask here to color for Kidcot. Next we went to Norway to ride Malestrom again another ride that we have never done. We are not big Epcot fans so we haven't fully explored this park besides the main attractions. After this we decided to get some lunch and we wanted to get our free photopass session at Innoventions since I have a Disney Visa Card so back over to Future World.

Here is Miss Emilia coloring her mask. I really wished that this wasn't sponsered by Sharpie because she doesn't color with markers very often let alone permanent markers. After lunch we headed over to Innoventions for the free picture and to play there for a little while. Then we went to the Universe of Energy and rode that ride as we have never done it since it is so long. Emilia fell asleep on that ride not sure how she did that with how loud it is in there but she did.

Since Emilia was sleeping in her stroller we decided it was a good time to use our fast passes for Test Track. After test track we made our way over the United Kingdom so Herm could get something to eat. After this we made our way to the Imagination Pavilion. Again another thing that we haven't done. Can you tell that don't we spend a lot of time in this park?? After Figment we got a snack and sat down to figure out what we wanted to do the rest of the evening. Did we want to park hop over to Magic to catch the Main Street Electrical Parade again or just go back to the hotel and pack? We decided to take a ride on the Monorail since we hadn't done that yet and then head back to the resort.

We got back to the resort and ordered Papa John's. We went swimming one last time and packed up all of our stuff since we had to leave in the morning. Magical Express would be there at 9:30 to pick us up and take us back to Orlando International Airport.

Our mousekeeper decorated our window for us when we got back that evening to say goodbye. We finally had a good mousekeeper on this trip that did different things for Emilia. One day she had Julie hanging from the curtains. Not that we got mousekeeping everyday since she liked to come during nap time. It was a great trip and couldn't ask for better weather. I was worried about going in September since it was still going to be hot, hurricane season and it normally rains a little bit everyday. We didn't have a drop of rain luckily.

When we will get back there is still up in the air as when we got home we found out that we were expecting another little Mouseketeer. This kid will either be terrified of everything as I rode all of the big rides since I didn't know I was pregnant or love thrill rides. Lets hope for the later. I am sure that the second one won't get three trips to Disney under three like Emilia did espcially since we have to start paying for Emilia to get in now. Plus it wasn't fun seeing the Magic Kingdom under all of that construction and that won't be done until 2013-2014. Maybe we'll have to head West and go to Disneyland with the munchkins in 2012 after Cars land opens and a lot of the construction at Disney's California Adventure is done.

In the words of Mickey Mouse - See ya Real Soon!

Walt Disney World - Day 6

September 21st, 2010

We started our day at Blizzard Beach Waterpark. It was a nice short bus ride from our resort at All Star Music. We arrived about 30 minutes before the park opened. They opened the gates about 15 minutes before opening and let us in to the lockers/changing area. Herm got Emilia's swim diaper on and then I changed into my suit. We then waited for official park opening which features a family of the day that goes down Summit Plummit first. They had to count down two times because the person didn't go on the first countdown. We made our way to the kiddie area and staked out our spot for the day. Emilia had a lot of fun going down all of the slides and playing in the kiddie area. We had a thief on our hands as she came back to our chairs with a boat. Never did figure out who that belonged too. We just let her play with it and figured some little kid would come up and take it from her which never happened. Herm and I took turns going to the different areas of the park. I did a loop on the lazy river and then we went down the family raft slide which Emilia had a blast on. I am not sure what Herm did but I didn't go down any of the other slides as I was being a chicken and didn't want to go by myself. Maybe next time we'll have someone else with us. We went to the wave pool as a family and then grabbed some lunch. Emilia played some more in the Kiddie area before we decided it was time to get back to the resort since it was 2 pm.

All of that playing in the waterpark wore our little girl out. She took a nice long nap. After she got up we made our way to the Magic Kingdom to attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party again. This time we were mostly going for the rides since our Magic Kingdom day ended up being very busy. We ate dinner in Frontierland and caught a little bit of the parade. Emilia loved dancing to the music. The only thing that we missed at the Halloween Party was the Villians Show and we ended up missing it again tonight and the parade. Emilia talked her Daddy into buying her a Minnie Light up/Spin toy finally when I was on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I guess she even took Julie out of the stroller and bought her over to the cart to show it to her that Daddy couldn't resist anymore.Here is Emilia in the Halloween outfit that I ordered for her on etsy. She spilled chocolate milk all over it by the middle of the night that we had to buy her a new shirt and the skirt came off. Oh well...at least it held up the first night at the Halloween Party. We stayed until closing and took our time going out to the busses as we knew that they would be full. We ended up getting on the All Star Sports bus and then walking to Music as the music line was very long. Tomorrow is our last day full day at Disney and we'll be heading to Epcot whenever we get up.