Third Month

Three Months- July 20th!

Took an 11 hour car ride to Tennessee. (because doesn't everyone think its smart to drive 11 hours with a 3 month old? ;-) )

Went to work with mom for a week at school for Lit Camp.

Started to giggle.

So much more alert.

After we came home from Tennessee, Eva seemed to be getting much better with her reflux issues.

Started to use her feet to do absolutely everything! She is either half monkey or is going to rock at soccer.

We love her personality! She is super goofy like her dad but also has a spitfire side to her like her mom! ( pray for us )

Second Month

Second Month

Weight 9.5

Highlights from 2 months!

Eva started smiling! Loves being held by her momma! Loves reading books and loves music!

Trip to Ohio for Dads work. Stayed in Cinncinati, Columbus and Newerk Ohio. 

Took work trip to Indiana and went to her first wedding!

Missed Daddy while he was in California, but loved staying with Yai Yai!

Got first round of immunizations. Eva did better than mom.

Met her Mommas students!

Celebrated first Fathers Day and Dads birthday.

Strongly dislikes tummy time.

First Month

First Month

Gained one pound at her first doctors visit.

Loved our visitors from Iowa Ryan, Ed, Jenni and Adam!

Went on a tour of Ford Field.

First Mothers Day.

Sleeps A LOT!

Nurses like a champ!

Has had some bad reflux issues.

Loves the swing.

Met all her cousins.

Went to her first birthday party, her cousin Belles.

Had jaundice and had to go get her foot poked to check her blood every week, for her first five weeks.

Mom learning a new norm with Dads travel.

Welcome Evangeline Harbison Sideris

(Better late than never)


Evangeline Harbison Sideris
April 20th 2015
5:41 PM
5 lbs 12 oz 18.5 inches long

How we came up with her name > Nicks Grandma was a super important woman in his life and her name was Eva Harbison. We really liked the name Evangeline but knew it was too long so we named her Evangeline Harbison but took the front end of her name and call her Eva after his Grandma!

Birth Story

So we found out half way through our pregnancy that Eva had a two vessel umbilical cord. Which can mean a whole array of issues that could have been wrong with her. Long story short, we were referred to a genetics doctor, had ultrasounds every week, what seemed like a million Non Stress Tests and prayed a whole lot and she came out healthy! However, during our last ultrasound at 37 weeks, our doctor told us she had quit growing and that she was getting the eviction notice. Nick had been in Chicago during that ultrasound with plans of flying out of there to speak at a very large event in San Diego that Friday. I ended up calling him in tears because I knew he wasn't going to be able to attend that and because I was scared out of my mind. Having an induction is great for my type A personality but also very bad for my type A personality. Nick flew back home and we finished a few last minute to do items and headed to the hospital on Saturday. It was like checking into a hotel. The nurse was all "Right this way to your room. Here is your fancy gown. Get comfy, you may be here awhile." So, they gave me Cervidil at 8PM and I fell asleep. At 3 AM I started to have contraction. The contraction came on like a freight train, coming every two minutes.  Our nurse Sunday ended up being the worlds oldest and grumpiest nurse around. She checked me around 4PM and I was only dilated to a 3. That was a heck of a lot of work to only be dilated to a 3. The nurse was trying to pressure me into an epidural and Pitocin. Nick and I decided to wait until the next nurse and Doctor came back on to discuss what the next steps would be.

7 PM Enters the greatest nurse and Doctor. My contraction started to slow down to 10 minutes apart and we decided to try and rest until morning to move forward. 9AM we started Pitocin and within minutes my contractions started full force again. They were only a minute apart so they had to slow the Petocin down at one point. I was checked again at 1PM that day and was dilated to a 6. I was in so much pain and exhausted at that point. Nick and I were nervous that the doctors were going to want to do a C-Section if things continued moving slowly. (Henry Ford has a high C-Section rate) So, we discussed getting the epidural and brought the anesthesiologist in to go ahead with it. Oh boy, best decision I have ever made. I will never try and be a hero again. I ended up falling asleep and an hour later had the doctor break my water. Within minutes I felt the need to push, half hour later we met sweet Evangeline.

Here are a couple funny stories throughout our time at the hospital.

Nick and I took a walk around the unit to try and get things moving faster Monday morning. He held my IV as I walked slowly. Every time I had a contraction I would stop and hum (like they teach in birthing classes). One time I stopped and started humming the Star Spangled Banner! (What the heck? I have no idea where that came from!) I look over at Nick and he stops and puts his hand over his heart. I had a mixture of laughing and crying going on. He said, " You know how patriotic I am!"

During delivery there was a whole NICU team in our room for Evangeline when she arrived because of all her issues.  Well during the time I was pushing I could see one of her nurses standing in the corner just smiling and laughing away. I said at one point, " I am going to throw something at that lady. What is she laughing about?" Oh boy! Maybe its because I kept yelling, "Holy mother of Mary!"(No, we are not Catholic) , " I can feel the ring of fire!", or "Holy S###!" (When I saw her dark hair)!

After we met our sweet girl, all four of our parents came to meet her. Tuesday we had my grandparents, sister, our friends Hilary and Jordan and the Collias side come visit. After five long days and four long very expensive nights at our hotel/hospital we took our sweet little one home.

Here our some pictures of Evangeline's first few days!

Blessed

I have had time to do new posts!!! School was super chaotic for a moment there but now I have had two weeks off and almost feel like I am going crazy with all of this extra time! My house has been "deep" cleaned one to many times and I am prepared for my next semester of classes! A few weeks ago I was so fortunate to go home to Michigan. My boss had said she was going to New York to visit her family and that I would have a week and a half of no work. So I decided to go spend it at home, which was so great because I was there for my nieces and nephews birthday party. All four kids birthdays are within two months of each other and since it would be crazy to plan four birthday parties with my sisters schedule she has one! With no preplanning of my trip I was feeling super blessed to not have missed it! I was also feeling super lucky to be able to witness my second niece Belle get baptized. I might of lost my marbles had I missed that!;-) My Grandpas sister had passed away a few days before I had arrived in Michigan, so even though it was a not-so-wonderful event I was able to be there for my Grandpa and family and attend the funeral. A plus was my Aunt Deb came up from Tennessee to make it to the funeral so I was able to spend time with her as well! The rest of the week was great, my mom took the whole week off and we spent ALOT of time together! My favorite day was we woke up and went antique shopping and thrift store shopping! We found some awesome places all around Michigan!

My cousin Amber is getting married next August and I am her Matron of Honor. I sound so stinkin old being called a Matron. She said she is going to call me her "old maid" from now on! While I was in town we went shopping for her wedding dress. I thought it was going to resemble the time I picked out my wedding dress. I tried on about five and chose one, bought and left with it from the store. Took about a total of an hours worth of time. Not Amber, she tried on about twenty and didn't chose ANY of them. The best part of trying on dresses with Amber is Chelsea my little cousins commentary. :-) Funny how close Amber and I have been growing up but yet we are so different! She will find her perfect dress one day, I know it!!

Ultimately I felt really loved by the Lord this whole week. I think he knew my heart and that I would have been a little heart broken to have missed the baptism, birthdays, funerals and being there for my cousin while she prepares for her special day! How crazy was it that it all happened in a week and my boss happened to chose that week to go out of town when normally she visits her family the first or second week in July!

Psalm 37:4

Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

July

Im doing this backwards because I forgot about posting this! This happened before my trip home!

The beginning of July my Mom had planned on coming down to spend a long weekend with me! She was bringing my Grandma along with her! They came in on a Thursday and to my surprise my nieces popped out of the van! This is extra special to me because growing up I would always go with my Grandma and Grandpa down to Tennessee to visit my Aunt and Uncle. The road trips were always so fun and the time in Tennessee was always so great. I hate living away from my nieces and nephew because I feel like I miss out on so much stuff. However, I think back to my relationships with my Aunts and I felt just as close to my family in Tennessee as I did family in Michigan. It was just a treat to get to see them. So this was great, now it is a treat for them to come to Iowa!

We decided to use the weekend to make a Park Passport and hit up all of Des Moines great Parks! If there is one thing Des Moines has it is great parks!! We documented it and put our pictures into the passport to remember our time. Here are our pictures.....

LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF THE WEEKEND!

Colorado

Our Colorado trip was probably one of the craziest weekends I have had in a long time!

We started out on a Thursday when we left Des Moines with our friends Ryan, Andrea, and Andy. The car ride was quite adventuress. Our friends soon found out about my fear of riding in cars as soon as we took off and what felt like a tornado was happening. Driving down I-80 pitch black in the rain and lightening storm was quite terrifying. My nerves were calmed by Ryan's sarcasm and our car ride sing alongs to ghetto old school rap! We arrived in Colorado to stay the night in a hotel next to a prison, this created some great commentary from everyone. We awoke and headed to Idaho Springs! This was one of my favorite parts of the trip! This little town reminded me of the town from cars, Radiator springs! It was a cute little old mining town. We ate and went white water rafting, our tour guide was from Michigan and knew some of my friends, so that was fun to chat about while we were dodging rapids! Really there were only two rapids that frightened me but lucky me I have a strong husband that knows his wife really well and made sure I didn't fall out of the boat!

We drove to our huggggge house that held all thirty of us to eat and get about three hours of sleep! We woke up and went to hike a mountain at one in the morning. Nick and I loveee sleep which made this decision to get up at 1:00AM really hard! We are super thankful we did, there is something really unifying about hiking up a 14,000 foot mountain with some of your closet friends. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done. You literally cant breath at the altitude your at. We lost a few on the way up the mountain, some people got sick from the altitude sickness, and mostly your muscles get so tired from lack of oxygen. It was the weirdest feeling of getting your breath back, walking three steps and being out of breath again. I thought I lost Nick a few times along the way but ultimately it was so fun to do as a group together. Next time I am going to train for it!

We went back to the house and slept for around four hours, woke up and went to Longmont to go SKYDIVING! This was soooooo fun and I think everyone in their lifetime should try it once. Nicks uncle is one of the crazy guys that jumps into the Broncos stadium at every game and his full time job is jumping out of airplanes. He is CRAZY! There was five of us that went to Longmont to jump, Krystina, Stephen, Lindsay, Nick and I! Here are pictures.........

After our Saturday festivities, we slept and woke up Sunday morning to leave! Such a fun weekend with fun people! Thanks to Kate Altmaier for planning the shenanigans!! Also I stole some pictures from Jill...Thanks Jillski!!:-)