Sunday Tears

We are always trying to find Sabath appropriate activities for Samantha. Even with afternoon church, there is still a lot of Sunday left and she is both cranky from missing her nap, and she gets bored easily. So, I decided that even though we try not to watch movies on Sunday, maybe if we watched The Prince of Egypt, that would be ok. Come on, it's a bible story, right!! Anyway, so I checked it out at the library and after a busy Sunday morning, Jon and I were both glad that we could put this movie on for Samantha. So Samantha's sitting on the floor watching it while I'm getting dinner ready and as soon as the mommy put baby Moses in the river, Samantha literally burst into tears. We're not talking little ones either, complete sobs!! It took me ten minutes to get her to calm down. She just looked at me like, why would the mommy do that, she was so sad and upset! It was hard to explain it to her, and then they only show the baby once more, then it's grown up Moses, which further complicated things. Anyway, it was the cutest thing in the world. I am so lucky to have such a sensitive little girl. She is always worried about other kids when they cry and will come and give you a hug or a pat or anything she can think of if you are sad. I love my little Samantha girl:)

Baby Eleanor!!

Eleanor Marie Armour is finally here!!
Born: April 14th, 2009 at 9:55pm
8lbs 7oz and 21 in long

Here we all are a couple of minutes after she was born. I know I know, you can't see her face...good job mom:)

Here she is getting her very first bath. So red, but since she came out blue, we're happy with the red!

I'm trying to show off her long skinny feet.

Proud and happy daddy!! I love how Eleanor is staring up at him:)

Mommy holding little Eleanor, it was nice to be up and moving around so fast!

Getting ready for her first car trip!

Samantha meets Eleanor for the first time. Nice big kisses from the big sister. She still gets tons of kisses from Samantha all day long:)

This is my absolute favorite! So excited to be able to hold the baby sister we've been talking about for months!!

So I thought I'd post the pictures first so that way those of you who don't want to read the long synopsis of the labor story could stop reading now! But I want to get it all out now while I still remember everything. So, since Samantha was early I was expecting this one to be early too. Even though I tried to tell myself that there was a strong chance she wouldn't be, it was hard to not anticipate an early delivery like my first. Then when I went to my check up three weeks before my due date and was already dilated to a 2 1/2 I thought for sure she would come. But even though every appointment I was further dilated, little Eleanor decided to be nice to me and wait so we could get moved in to our new apartment and celebrate Easter with Samantha rather than being in the hospital. So her Easter due date came and went and I was officially ready to have her. I for some reason really didn't want to be induced, so I was grateful on Tuesday when she decided to come! But....I was not to thrilled with how. My water broke at 5:50 Tuesday evening, which is something I've always feared would happen. But it was totally different then I expected. I couldn't even tell for sure if my water broke or if I just peed my pants...embarrassing I know. I called Jon, but was debating whether or not to go to the hospital...I really didn't want to go there to have them tell me that I just peed my pants. But after calling the hospital, we decided to go in and it's a good thing we did. We got to the hospital around 7 by the time Jon got home and Nancy(Jon's mom) came over to watch Samantha. I was dilated to a 4 and had just started having some contractions that were semi painful. They tested me and my water had broken (phew!!) so we let Jon's mom know we would be having a baby sometime soon:)

So then we hung out and watched as my contractions got closer together and more painful. It went really quick from there. Once I started having the contractions they basically came every minute. I was trying to see how long I could wait before getting the epidural...I felt wimpy asking for it since I'd only been there for like an hour. NOT a smart idea. I asked for the epidural around 9 but by then the doctor was already with another patient. I was ok with that thinking it couldn't be too long before he came. But then my contractions started coming without any time in between and when the nurse came to check me I was fully dilated. So...by the time the doctor came to give me the epidural I was pushing and I had little Eleanor ten minutes later. This was after lots of begging for the epidural and telling them that I did NOT want to do this naturally. Which they basically told me I had no choice since I would be having the baby before the epidural could even kick in! I still insisted that I wanted the epidural, but when I sat up to get it I realized I needed to push so that ended that. Which I was grateful for in the end cause it would definitely not have been fun to have my epidural kick in right after I had her. Haha, I'm sure the nurses thought I was pretty funny though. Anyway, so I had little Eleanor naturally and it was an awesome experience. I was able to get up and see her so much faster. I was litter ally on my feet in minutes and got to see everything that was going on rather than being stuck in bed. Not to say I'd choose that way again...I'm not sure, but it was a great experience!!

We were able to leave the hospital the next afternoon, which was nice because I really missed my little Samantha and was ready to be back at home in my own bed. Little Eleanor has been a joy. She is such a good little baby. I don't think we really heard her cry until she had to get her heal pricked for her bilirubin test. Samantha absolutely loves her and is adjusting rather well to being a big sister and having to share her parents. She is silly and will ask to be burped or other silly things to be like her little sister, but we're trying to give her the attention she needs so that she doesn't feel left out. It is such a joy to have two sweet little girls. I am so grateful for my growing little family and that I know we can be an eternal family. What a blessing that is!!

It's been too long...

So, it has been a really really long time since I have posted anything, so I decided to give a small update. Between everyone being sick for more than a month and the holidays, I never got around to blogging. We moved to St. George, UT at the end of December and now unfortunately I don't have access to my pictures that I need to go back and blog everything I missed. We are living with Jon's parents till we find a house, so most everything is in storage. Soo...it may be awhile again till I get to posting, because I'm weird and like them to be in order, but hopefully I'll find a way to get to those pictures so I can catch up!! We're doing well, and just adjusting from the move. Samantha has pretty much adjusted and is loving living with her Nama and Papa. Hopefully more will come soon!

Some daily events around the Armour Home

Here are just some random pictures I've taken of Samantha being a goof. She loves to dress up, make messes, climb on things and snuggle under blankets. She especially loves "hiding" under the blankets with Daddy when he comes home from work. He comes home and that's what she wants to do right away, Daddy's such a good sport:)

Here she is making a mess with rice krispies. I had this week where I seriously had to bake something everyday for play group, super saturday etc. Anyway, she climbed in the cupboard and found an open bag of rice krispies. She was just sitting there eating them, so I let her keep them. Five minutes later I looked up to this!! She was throwing them up in the air and stomping on them...so I did what I always do. I take pictures:) She actually helped me clean up though!

My attempts at some Fall Crafts

So, I'm not a very crafty person, so to think of crafts to do with Samantha is tricky!! But I really wanted to do some, so I decided to do a leaf collage. It was actually really fun!! We went for one of our daily walks, but I told her to look for pretty leaves while we did, and she was great at it!! I think it made for a different walk experience because her eyes were on the ground the whole time. So we collected a bunch of leaves and then after her nap glued them on to a paper. So I know, not the most creative, but she loved that she got to glue something and stick it down, I just had to try and convince her not to pull them back off:)


Here she is gluing. I'm not sure why I don't have a picture of the final product. I'll have to take one now!!

So our next craft was making the annual halloween sugar cookies. I know, I'm so creative I'm not sure what to do:) Here she is helping me mix them. She's actually very good at pouring and getting it in the bowl, it's just the stirring where it tends to go everywhere. I tried to not worry though, and just let the flour go everywhere, haha, easier said than done!

So here's a first glimpse at the new cheesy grin that she does. It's nice because she'll actually pose for the camera rather than running over to look at it, but you have to surprise her if you want to actually see her eyes!

She loved the cookie cutting and rolling process. We didn't keep many that she cut out, but she was content just to push the cookie cutters down wherever she could.

The frosting didn't go as well, she just stabbed her cookie and refused to let me help.

Right before this I decided to try and let her use the sprinkles. I thought if I could just get one picture then I'd help her, not a good idea. She dumped the whole bottle on her cookie!! I didn't even get the picture because I dropped the camera trying to save the sprinkles, haha.

That's about all she ate of the cookie:) So apparently for her the making was much better than the eating. We had a great time though, and I think we will continue it as a tradition.

Campout with the Spillanes

So we braved another campout with Samantha over labor day weekend. Her first campout was on the beach for the Armour family reunion. She was only 9 months and couldn't crawl, so camping with a curious little girl running around was definitely a different experience but we had a great time. Samantha loved it!! The only downside was that she wouldn't sleep, literally from 11pm to 5:30am we were up. I finally had to go in the car because I couldn't keep her quite and I didn't want her keeping our friends the Spillanes up. So she crawled around and played in the car all night while I tried to keep her from freezing. I finally went back in around 5:30, got her to sleep by 6, and the Spillanes little boy Gaven woke up at 7. So, mommy only got an hour of sleep, but Samantha slept till nine:) Overall though, I would do it again in a heartbeat! I have so many fun memories camping with my family when I was younger, I definitely want that to be a tradition with our family:)

Here's Samantha playing at the little park they had at the campsite:)

We went on a hike the next morning. Since we never bought one of those huge camping carriers, we tried out the little infant carrier. It actually worked great, even though Samantha is so tall, she was barely over the weight limit:)

This is one of our little family on the hike. Don't look to closely! Remember I'm like 8 weeks pregnant running on one hour of sleep and not enough food!!

Here's Samantha trying to help daddy put the tent away.

The two little ones played in the car while we all cleaned up. This is Creed's hat:) She loves playing in cars, so she was in heaven, although I thought she would have had enough after the night before.

We had a great time and were grateful the Spillanes invited us to go!! We were also glad it was only for a night. Next time maybe we'll be a little braver and go for longer:)

Samantha's First Trip to the Zoo!

So here are some pictures of Samantha's first zoo experience. We went in the middle of August so the weather was perfect. She absolutely loved it!! We will definitely be getting a season pass next year:)

These first two pictures are of her feeding the Giraffes, (well, mom and dad feeding them, she wasn't quite that brave!) which was by far her favorite part. We could have spent all day there. She loved watching their tongues stick out to grab the crackers. Lots of fun!!

Here she is mimicking the giraffes!! It was so cute, at first we weren't sure what she was doing and then it clicked. She seriously did that for the rest of the day!! What a cute girl we have:)

Here she got to pet a baby wallaby. It was so little and sleeping so I wasn't sure if she'd even realize what it was, but she of course did and was excited that she actually got to touch an animal! (Mommy wouldn't let her go to the petting zoo portion...we'll brave that next year when I have a little more control over what she puts in her mouth, including her hands!!) I actually thought the older wallabies were way more exciting. They were hopping all around us, because we were gated in, they could just roam around, so that was lots of fun.

Next we went into this room full of birds. The exhibit is called budgie buddies and was actually very cool. I don't normally enjoy having hundreds of birds flying over my head, but of course Samantha loved it and we didn't get pooped on, so overall a good experience;)

The monkeys were also a big hit, of course!! I think the people around us liked watching Samantha scream monkey sounds more than looking at the actual monkeys!!

Here she's looking at the gorillas and if you look closely you can tell she's doing monkey motions and I'm sure monkey noises as well:) There was a baby gorilla with its mommy that she loved. We couldn't get her to leave or even let anyone else in to look with her!! Looks like her obsession with babies doesn't end with humans!



Here she is exhausted on the way to the car. We bought her a souvenir giraffe, much to daddy's dismay! But she loves it and still sleeps with it almost every night:)

We had a great time at the zoo! I only wish we wouldn't have waited so long to take her. Oh well, there's always next year:)