Paisley Noelle ~ 8 Weeks

So here is the 8 week update on our sweet little Paisley. She is getting so big! She is smiling a lot. She really lights up when Lexi talks to her, that sister bond is already showing. Last night Paisley slept until 5 am!! Yay Paisley!! Now lets just hope she continues that! :) Here are a few pictures of our little Paisley girl.

Current Loves of her life :

Daddy

Tummy Time

Bath


Smiles

Mother's Day

So I am a little behind sharing about our fun Mother's Day, but better late than never right? So on Mother's Day we got up and ready for church. Right before we were about to leave Rabu and Lexi sneak down the hallway and then Lexi comes out with a bag and a silly grin. They gave me my mother's day gift, a couple charms for my bracelet. I love them! After church we stopped at Wendy's to grab some lunch before we got on the road to my mom's house for a Mother's day dinner. Lexi was so sweet, she wanted to sit by me and cuddle with me. I don't know if she even understood the day, but she was sweeter than normal giving me lots of hugs and saying those sweet little words, "mommy, mommy".

On the way to mom and dad's Lexi took off her pony tail holders and put them around her legs, she is so creative. She finally fell asleep, and it was so funny that she had the pony tail holders still on her legs.

When we got to mom and dad's we relaxed and played with the nieces and nephews. It was a great time! Paisley also gave me some great smiles for Mother's Day. What a sweet gift.

What an honor to be a mother, God is so faithful. I love my kiddos!

Paisley Noelle ~ 6 weeks

Our sweet little Paisley is already 6 weeks old! It is amazing how quickly the time flies by. She is getting so much bigger. She is starting to fill out. Her little legs are starting to get that adorable baby chunk! I love chunky baby legs. She is so much more aware of what is going on around her. She is having longer awake times during the day. Thankfully her extended awake times are not during the night. She is actually getting pretty good at sleeping for at least 5 to 6 hours strait most nights. Thank God!

Notice the dimple on her cheek! Lexi has one on the opposite side! They each just have one dimple. Cute, cute, cute!

I am still on maternity leave for another six weeks. I am so thankful for being able to take 12 weeks off from work. I am having such a wonderful time getting to know my little Paisley.

Lexi is warming up to Paisley more and more every day. She will come by me when I am burping her and pat her on the back and shush her. She will also play with Paisley's hair. Today Lexi was playing with her baby doll and was rocking her, shushing her and asking her if she wanted milk. She is a good little momma!

Tickles and Take-Out

Recently we had a very fun evening. It is just the simple things in life that make us laugh the most. Since Paisley was born, I have cooked some but as to be expected I do not have the energy to cook every night. One night Rabu picked up Pei Wei on the way home. I like to eat my Teriyaki Chicken Bowl with chop sticks. So of course Lexi wants to use chop sticks too. Amazingly she got the hang of them. Granted she had unconventional methods of getting the rice on the chopsticks but she used them just the same. I am so proud of my smarty pants Lexi Bear.

Oh then after she was done using them to eat, they quickly transformed into drumsticks. She and daddy had a great time "playing the drums".

After the drums we moved into the living room to play, and it soon turned into Tickle time! :) I love tickle time, we get the best giggles and laughs from tickle time.

Paisley's Dedication

Paisley was dedicated on April 26th. Rabu and I believe in taking our children before the church and dedicating them to the Lord. What that means to us is that we are giving ourselves and our daughter to the Lord and dedicating us to His service. As parents we publicly proclaim that we will do whatever it takes to provide for our child and to raise her to the best of our ability to follow God. Here is the scripture that we picked for her life scripture.

Ephesians 3:16-19 (New Living Translation)
16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

It was a very sweet moment for our family. We were blessed to have both of our mothers there with us. Lexi and Paisley's Godparents, Ward and Patty Seibert and two of their sons, Jackson and Dylan were also there. We are so blessed to have such wonderful people to be in our children's lives. They have some amazing grandparents and godparents. One funny moment was when Pastor Brent asked to hold Paisley and I began to hand her over, big sister Lexi was very protective of baby sister and was not completely thrilled with him holding her. It was very cute. Here are a few pictures from the service.

Spring has Sprung!

I love spring!! It is so beautiful outside and all the world seems to come back to life with all the flowers and trees. Loving it! It is also a perfect time to be outside, not to hot and not too cold...just perfect weather. Lexi loves going outside, well she calls it "bye - byes". So we have been making sure that we take time everyday to just play outside a little bit. We have taken some fun pictures of our outside play time. Enjoy!

Birthday and Easter Celebrations

Good Friday was also Rabu's birthday. Since it was Good Friday Rabu was home from school, so we got to celebrate him all day long. We started with a birthday breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon. Yummy. Then I gave him his birthday cake...pound cake. It is his aunties special recipe and his absolute favorite. Then for dinner we had steak with avocado salsa and bacon wrapped shrimp. That night we ended a day of celebration by the family piling in the bed and watching Rabu's favorite movie, The Lion King. It was a perfect lazy day. He even had some sweet friends Bree, Ric and Laney come over and bring him a very special gift. Gotta love good friends. So all in all I would say he had a great birthday.

Easter Sunday was Paisley's first time to go to church, we did not go into the main service, we just hung out with Daddy in kids church. He did a great lesson with the kids for Easter Sunday. He is so gifted to work with kids. Then we were off to my parents house in Tahlequah. My sister and her family were there as well. Mom made a great meal and had Easter baskets for the kids. Here are a few pictures from Easter.

Paisley and Family Two Week Photo Session

Click on the picture below to link to our family photo session for Paisley's two week photos. Enjoy

Paisley Noelle ~ Week Two

OK, so I promise I am not going to do weekly updates, but Paisley has already changed so much. We went to her two week check up and she is already 8 lbs 15.5 oz!! She is gaining weight like a champ. Those who know the stress that we had the first two weeks of Lexi's life because she was not gaining weight know what a blessing this is to us! Thank the Lord!!

Lexi is really warming up to her little sis. She is such a great helper. She gets diapers for me and she helps me calm the baby down by patting her back. She loves to point out her eyes, nose, feet and elbows. It is so cute how she is processing having a little sister.

We went and had some pictures taken yesterday of Paisley and the family. We took two week pictures with Lexi and wanted to do the same with Paisley. I think they are going to turn out great. Although Lexi was not totally thrilled with the idea of getting pictures taken, she did OK. We did not get the pictures of the girls that I was hoping for, or even a really good family picture, but you know that is how it is with a 20 month old and there is not too much you can do about it other than roll with it. I will post a link when we get the proofs so that you can take a look.

As far as life getting back to normal, I think that will be a while. I am feeling really good as far as my recovery, but I will tell you, there is this wall that you hit at week two. I hit that today, I had grand plans for doing dishes, laundry and going to the grocery store today, I could not get enough energy to do anything until about 2 this afternoon. Instead, I spent the morning on my couch with my baby girl in my arms and rested. Now I have managed to put a few loads of laundry in and do the dishes, but I am not going to the store, I will simply make Rabu a list and he will get the honors. :) It's all about just doing what you can and not worrying about the rest.

Paisley has pretty much figured out her days and nights and sleeps a lot. When she is awake she is wide awake and looking around at her world, wide eyed and taking it all in. She is a pretty easy baby. She cries when she is hungry or has a little bubble in her tummy, and is fairly happy the rest of the time. She has a really sweet spirit about her. I cannot wait to watch her grow into a lovely young lady who loves God and lives out her purpose. I also cannot wait to see her and Lexi interact more. There is something very special about sisters and I am excited that they have each other.

Ok, I guess that is enough of the ramblings of a tired but very content mommy. :)

Paisley Noelle - Week One

It has been one week since Paisley joined our family. What a blessing she is! The delivery went as perfect as expected. We knew we were going in for a c-section, and since I had one with Lexi, I kinda knew what to expect. We had friends at the hospital all along the way: one of Rabu's student's parents was our Labor and Delivery nurse, a sweet friend from Church is the Labor and Delivery Nurse manager, and another sweet friend from Church was working in the nursery. It was nice to see friendly faces all along the way. God totally went before us and made this a wonderful experience.

They took me back to the OR at 9:00 last Tuesday, once they had given me my spinal block and were ready to get started they brought Rabu in. Then the doctors did their job. Seems like next thing I know I hear Dr. Blackstock saying, "oh my goodness, she is gorgeous!" and then baby girl let out a scream!! I am so glad she started crying right away. As many moms know its that split second from when the baby is delivered until they hear their baby cry is a little stressful. I just started crying when I heard her very strong voice. She was here! So Rabu went back with the baby as they cleaned her up and took all her stats. 8 lbs 6 oz, Born at 9:30 am, 20.75 inches

The doctor asked if we had named her yet, and I answered as I had answered for the last 3 weeks... We have not decided yet. Even though we were pretty sure we were going with Paisley. The nurse that is a friend of ours said, uh he is telling the name in the other room.... I asked what he was saying and thankfully Paisley was the answer. So then she was named! Well half way. We still did not have a middle name. Oh well we had 3 days to come up with something. Thankfully it did not take us 3 days, by the next day we had decided on Noelle. Paisley Noelle Leyva...our beautiful little lady.

My sister had brought me this adorable blanket right before delivery it was a quilt made out of the sheets that matches Paisley's bedding in her crib and another fabric. The other fabric had a paisley pattern on it. It made me smile, well I guess I smirked because after Lea heard the name she said, "that is why you made that face." I felt like it was God's little way of saying yep, Paisley is the name!

They brought Paisley over to me as they were "putting me back together". Such a sweet sweet moment. The first time you see your child. The sweetest thing is that she kept reaching out for me, she eventually grabbed my nose. She just kept making me cry and smile. I was just so happy to see her. Rabu and Paisley went to the nursery to finish cleaning up Paisley. He told the family her name through the glass. They took me back to the Labor and Delivery room to begin recovery. I was feeling great, but really I was pretty drugged up. :)

They finally brought Paisley to me and I got to hold her. We started feeding and she ate like a champ from day one. She has been a great eater since. She is already back to her birth weight in one week!! Praise the Lord!

Later they moved us to our post-partum room, a small one, but we were next on the list for a big room!! Yay, again God's favor on us. By that night we moved into the larger room. Such a blessing because there was room for friends and family to visit and celebrate our new little life.

Lexi came up to the hospital just hours after Paisley was born. She was just happy to see Rabu and I. She got up in bed with me and just cuddled a little bit, said "baby" and then was ready to run around and play. Lexi has warmed up to Paisley little bit and little bit every day. Yesterday, Lexi kissed the baby for the first time, and today when Lexi was going bye-byes she told the baby bye-bye and played with her little foot. She is already an awesome big sister. When the baby cries she looks at me and says, "UP!" She wants me to go get the baby up, she knows that it stops the crying. Also one time she looked at me and said, "Mommy, milk". She knew that was another way to get the baby to stop crying. Lexi is a smarty pants!

The recovery with the C-section has been exponentially better with this one. I was up and walking around pretty good by the second day this time, and I am doing so much more around the house because I am feeling good! God is so faithful.

Mom came and stayed with us for 4 days after we got out of the hospital to help with meals, cleaning and Lexi. She is such a blessing. Friends have been bringing meals and checking in on me daily. We are so blessed to have such a great network of friends that we love and love us!

Our little family has grown from 3 to 4 and it is just an amazing blessing. I cannot imagine our lives without either of our beautiful girls. What an amazing responsiblity to raise two girls to hear God's voice and not listen to the other voices that will try to call them away from the life that God has planned for them. We are so excited to have this opportunity and privilage to parent these girls. God is so Good! You know I am just amazed at how God just fills you with the love that you need to give, but I just feel like I am exploding with love for my family. I keep saying, our family feels good. It just feels right. I am so thankful to God for His blessings to our family.