As requested, here are a few photos of our sweet new baby girl. She is beyond precious and her big sisters are borderline obsessed with her. She’s a hungry little nugget and her forehead wrinkles slay me.

Here she is with Steve, minutes old.

And this photo truly captures Avelyn’s joy in meeting her new sister.

We can’t decide who Brinley looks like. I definitely see traces of Karenna in her, but it’s so hard to tell at this stage when all newborns kind of look like tired turtles.

I am working on the birth story and hope to have it ready for tomorrow. Brace yourselves; it’s intense. A one-hour labour is freaking crazy times, you guys.

(OK, so I really thought it was Wednesday. I was up with both kids in the night and had contractions all night long. No sleep = a hazy reality.)

In preparation for the arrival of our third child, we booted Karenna out of the nursery and set up a crib for her in Avelyn’s bedroom. What fun! Sisters, sharing a room, keeping each other company and deepening their bond of love. Hahahhaaaaaaaaaaa!

It’s been horrendous.

The first few nights they stayed up until nearly 10:00, even though we tucked them in at 7:00 PM. They were fairly happy to be together, so I didn’t fight it or lay the smack down. The problem was that they were still waking up at their usual time, so after a few days of losing three hours of sleep a night, they were both grumpy beasts (well, even more grumpy and beastly than they usually are). No fun for anyone. Then the novelty of sharing a room seemed to wear off slightly and they were both falling asleep within a half-hour of being put to bed. It’s cute to hear them chattering with each other and I love that they enjoy each other’s company.

But.

Karenna, who is ALMOST TWO, is still not sleeping through the night. (This is where I ask you to please kill me. I can’t take it anymore.) For the most part, Avelyn has gotten used to her sister’s night-time shrieking and I’ll often find Avelyn curled up in her bed in the fetal position, both hands over her ears as she sleeps, in a feeble attempt to block out the noise.

I am just at such a loss with what to do with Karenna. We started different variations of sleep training with her once she hit about seven months of age and I was like, “um, I don’t think you need six bottles a night anymore.” We tried the Baby Whisperer method, the Cry-It-Out approach, the We’re Putting You In A PlayPen in the Basement Because We Can’t Handle Your Screams Anymore technique, and nothing has worked. She’ll randomly sleep through the night, then we’ll be right back to square one with her rousing once or twice a night and I have HAD IT. I can’t help but feel anger towards her, this little two year-old, for not having her act together enough to just go to sleep already. I feel like just letting her cry it out isn’t really an option anymore now that she’s sharing a room with her sister, because then I’ll have two little girls wailing at 3 am (like I did last night…it was super fun). Gah. No clue what to do next. And, oh yeah, we’ll have a newborn in the house next week, so that should really add to the peaceful flow of our nighttime routine.

I am just so tired. And I know I am only going to become exponentially more tired once the baby arrives and I’m not feeling up for it. How will we make it through, how will I be able to keep up with pumping every three hours in the night and dealing with a hollering toddler?

It’s stuff like this that makes me feel like I kind of suck as a parent and wonder why the things that seem so simple for everyone else are hard for me. Kids have been sharing rooms for centuries, so why is it such a challenge to make it work for our family?

Anyone else been there?

If you’re not a Facebook friend of mine, you might not know that I’ve had violent diarrhea for the past four days straight. (What, you don’t use Facebook as a means to keep family and friends updated  on the consistency of your stools?) It’s been awful and I feel drained (ha! I mean that literally) and exhausted and I kind of miss my appetite (we’re usually quite close). And if I hear one more person tell me that diarrhea is a sign that labour is imminent, I am going to go and take my next watery dump on her doorstep. Because that’s a LIE. I actually went to the doctor today and she’s pretty sure I just have a 5-day viral case of The Squirts. If it keeps up, I get to walk into a lab tomorrow with my head held high, clutching some vials of my excrement, and see why I still feel so crummy. Just what a 38-week pregnant lady needs.

I am tired and hot and trying to enjoy these final days with the girls, which would be a lot easier if they would stop fighting and pulling each other’s hair and wanting to TALK TO ME.

The baby’s room is ready, my bag is packed for the hospital, the breast pump is sterilized, the carseat is installed…I am ready! Which means, of course, this kid is going to come two weeks late, right?

In other (slightly less grumpy) news, a local artist we know did a couple paintings of Avelyn from photographs I had taken. Anyone recognize these?

The originals are for sale at Sleeping Giant Winery in Summerland. Kind of cool to see our girl immortalized on canvas like that!

Oh, this girl.

Just for kicks, you should head on over and get caught up on my latest posts at UrbanMoms. Good times! More fun than this bike ride was, I can guarantee it!!

Summer means beach-swollen diapers,

late-night dinners and jammies at Nana’s beach,

swimming until the sunlight’s all gone,

and eating 18 freezies a day.

It’s been a good summer so far. Lots of time outdoors with family and friends, lots of memories, lots of sweatily waiting for this new baby to make her debut.

This photo is of Steve’s brother, Trevor, and his foxy new wife, Laurell on their wedding day. Along with the grumpy, uncooperative niece they would probably like to Photoshop out of this picture. Oh, good times!

*Photo by the amazingly talented Jamie Delaine.

This time four years ago I was cradling a swaddled bundle of newborn, feeling as though I’d been hit by a semi truck after a days-long labour, trying to absorb the fact that we were parents, that the baby in our arms was our very own daughter, for life.

Now, here we are, with a little girl who’s grown into a lanky, wild, spirited, kooky, willful, sensitive soul.

Being Avelyn’s mom has been hard sometimes. For two years she put my heart through an emotional meat-grinder as she pushed the limits on every boundary we gave her, and there were many days when I wondered if we’d ever see progress. But this past year has been filled with beautiful growth and maturity and fun and joy and it’s made every difficult step worth it.

Yes, it’s been hard. But it seems that anything worth having, is.

Happy birthday, Avelyn Paige!

PS: My mom made the Barbie cake. :)

Cherry harvest in our orchard is tomorrow so we went down to snag a few of the ruby gems for our personal eating before the trees get picked clean and the fruit sent to the packing house.

Karenna had just woken up so I plopped her in the stroller and she just kind of sat there like a sleepy lump while we filled our bowls.

Avelyn has been eating fresh cherries by the pound and I keep waiting for the inevitable sprint to the bathroom. So far, so good. She can hold her fruit. Good thing she’s a farmer’s daughter.

After a chilly, rainy start to summer we are at the beginning of our first full-fledged heat wave and I am not entirely ready for it. We’ll just be at the beach, downing ice cubes and freezies and cranking the A/C while we try to stay cool.

In other news, Avelyn had her first professional haircut. I had done an uneven hack job with our kitchen shears a few months ago and the ends were in dire need of a trim. So on a whim I took her to the ghetto salon in our local mall and she looked so grown up sitting in the chair with the big, dark cape around her neck. She looks decidedly less like Mowgli from the Jungle Book now and her hair is much less tangley and easier to comb through now that she’s had a decent cut. I just wish I had brought my camera. Guess I’ll just have to store that memory in the ol’ grey matter instead.

I hope your summer is off to a lovely start, just like ours!