alex is eight months old!

somehow this kid is yet another month older and my mum heart just can't deal with it... yet here we are and he's eight months old. 

during the past month alex has:

- said mum mum mummmm when he's really upset. i'm not 100% sure it was actually mum, but i am claiming it

- been scooting backwards around the floor

- raising himself up on to his hands and knees

- been sucking away on this thumb like his life depends on it

- had to become super loud to ensure he is heard over his brother and sister

- tried very hard to start crawling

- gotten so close to sitting up!

- on the very last day of this month, said his first very clear word - dad!

baby alex, you are so, so loved. ♥

baby alexander: seven months old

baby alexander is now seven months older and cuter than ever!

during the last month:

-whenever we would give him a spoon of food, he would suck his thumb as if he needed it to swallow what was in his mouth hahaha 

-he has a tickly spot on your back below his armpits and giggles non stop when we tickle him there.

-when someone sits him up, he can sit up leaning forward for balance, for brief periods before he topples over

-he is now sitting in the high chair and can be involved in a lot more because he is at our height

-he has often been caught sucking his big toes like a thumb and it is so funny!

-he is pushing himself backwards on the floor until he gets his legs stuck under furniture. 

and he finally cut his first two teeth!!!!

baby alex, you are so so loved!

baby alexander: four months old

four months already? what?

you've been a busy little baby with your blessing day yesterday, getting fussed over by everyone, but you were a champ!

during the last month alex has:

-made a very gurgling laugh when he thinks we are funny and doug tickles his face with his beard

-slept from 7:30ish until about 6am with a 10pm dream feed. (i am loving this!)

-he is grabbing out to get things and then holding on to them

-loving grabbing onto mine and madelines hair. he really does not want to let go and we have to untangle his fingers

-he is starting to try and roll over

-he has had a birth mark appear on the back of his leg, below his right knee. random!

you are still being fussed over by your siblings and doted on by all the family.

baby alex, you are so loved! ♥

baby alexander: three months old

look at this cutie! he is seriously the best thing ever! i am so glad we had a baby, he is cuddly, chunky and oh so adorable. he is 3 months today and he has slotted into our family so well. madeline and joseph are besotted and so proud to show him off to anyone that will look and listen. it's so cute.

over the last month he has been gurgling away and "chatting" back to us when we talk to him, now that he's awake for much longer periods of time. he's always happy and smiling to see us before he cries for his food, but you do not want to keep him waiting, he gets haaaaangry!

at around 9 weeks he started rewarding people for smiling at him with some big smiles of his own... and at 10 weeks he srtarted sleeping for 7-8 hours at a time. i am one heck of a happy mum!

he has also started to follow people around the room with his eyes and spent a few minutes looking for nanna with a very put out look on his face when i was speaking to her with the phone on speaker. it was so adorable, he loves his nanna already!

baby alex, you are so so loved!

baby alexanders birth announcement (+ what's in a name...)

here we are, with baby alexanders birth announcement finally ready to go... not late at all, who am i kidding? things have been a little crazy around here!

so... where did we get the name from - is a question we have been asked a lot over the past few weeks.

well. we threw around sooo many names and there was always either one of us that wasn't happy with the choice we would be discussing. i was convinced this baby was going to end up with a "h" name, as they were the ones being discussed the most.

i liked:

henry and hayden

doug suggested hudson, which joseph jumped at, can you imagine his baby brother being named after the fabulous hudson hornet? haha. then in came madeline who decided she was set on hunter.

plus i still loved:

leon and lennox 

which are both names we planned to call joseph...

one night while were laying in bed, almost asleep i said, "what about alexander?" doug replied with mmmmm, which led me to believe he liked it, only to find the next day he'd been more or less asleep, hadn't really heard me and didn't seem to be a fan. back to square one. 

from the day we knew we were having a boy, baby was always going to be something james, after dougs (childhood and still very much) best friend who lives in brisbane. he and doug are still firm friends after all these years and i adore him too. so that bit was easy.

a few weeks passed and doug was like, what about alexander? me: pffft. really? but i still did love it. dougs mum was super keen as well, as it had a samoan option - aleki. (he is now getting aleki and leki a lot) plus there were so many other nickname options: alex, xander, lex (i think this is what may have gotten doug on board. lex like lex luthor the villain from superman haha). but, it was still a toss up between some names and we just couldn't decide. all the h names seemed to go by the wayside and we were down to alexander and lennox. 

when he was born, everything happened so fast, there were people everywhere and we just didn't get time to talk about it or really decide. so the next day we sat down, looked at him, talked about it more... and he just wasn't a lennox. we both associated that name with much darker features and it just didn't seem right. alex seems like a red head name to me and it just worked. so alex it was. this time around was for sure the hardest to pick the name, but he suits it and we love it. and him. he is simply the best and we are obsessed ♥

first smile and first bath!

i know all the medical explanations, i know that babies "can't" smile before about the 6 week mark, i know it's supposedly wind. but look at this super cute face. he looked right at me this morning and smiled. so stuff you medicine, i am taking this, my baby smiled at me, and actually did it for so long that i managed to get a photo of it. so there. he's obviously just so happy to be home!

we also had our first bath today, now that there are no needles and tubes hanging out of his hands anymore... and he loved it!! he was so happy to be in the water and just chilled there, looking around with wide eyes while we sloshed the water around him. i have a feeling that he's going to love water as much as the other two do. he is such a little cutie. how lucky am i?

home time!

they finally let us go home today! baby alex's infection marker has continued to drop and the doctors were happy for us to continue treating it with antibiotics at home. hooray! after a stop off to the hospital pharmacy to get them we were on our way. we made it as far as mcdonalds (about 500m away) before he screamed so much that we had to stop and fill up his tummy, but eventually we made it home where nanna was waiting with a very excited joseph and madeline followed not much later from school. i am just so happy to be home!

i am generally a quite anxious person and some times are worse than others... but even though i was stuck in the hospital for the last 6 days with a newborn, who spent a lot of that time in the nursery, i was surprisingly okay. i had asked doug to give me a blessing prior to going in to be induced and although it was lovely, i didn't recall thinking at the time that much of it was for me personally, but it was. i never felt stressed, other than a brief 10 minute period the first night when alex was taken into the nursery and i didn't understand what was wrong or what was happening... and i was able to rest, have time to be alone and just spend time with my new baby, because we asked people not to visit while he was unwell. it was surprisingly a beautiful time even though i should have been beside myself and i am so grateful for the power of the priesthood, which can offer us so many blessings, big and small, for people big and small. ♥

slow and steady

at 4am this morning, baby alex's drip port was removed as it too (like the first one) was starting to fail and leak. not to worry, all his antibiotics can be administered orally from now on.

hearing test today... he passed. hooray. we are one step closer to going home. fingers crossed it happens tomorrow. i am starting to go a little stir crazy being stuck here for so long. never mind, slow and steady wins the race. this baby is well worth the waiting. 

out to the ward ♥

sunday has brought a wonderful blessing, baby alex was considered well enough to leave the nursery and come out onto the ward and share my room with me! hooray!

madeline and joseph had come for a visit with daddy and his parents, so when i was called into the nursery to feed baby, it was a wonderful surprise for us to be able to take him with us when we went back to the room. there were squeals and complete joy from madeline and big smiles from joseph as we brought him in to meet his siblings for the first time. 

it was absolutely love at first sight and these two are so pleased to have baby to cuddle and love to their hearts content. madeline is dying to play mum and i am sure she will be an amazing help to me.

big sister having her first cuddles ♥

alex my love, you are doing amazingly. i am sure we will be home before too long ♥

baby alexander james kendall

well, he is here! baby alexander james kendall arrived in a rush this afternoon, at 1:47pm, weighing 3550g (7lb, 8oz). he is the sweetest little babe and i am obsessed already! he has dark blue eyes and a little tuft of red hair at the back of his head... another redhead to add to our little clan! he looks very similar to madeline as a baby - and is basically a carbon copy of his daddy!

i was induced yet again, when i reached 41weeks+3days (the longest they allow you to go overdue here in wa) at midland hospital. the midwife broke my water at 12 noon and we waited. an hour passed and towards the end i was having small contractions (which i could feel), but nothing really huge enough to show well on the machine that measures them, so the midwife said she assumed the dr would ask them to start the drip which triggers them. thankfully when she arrived at the end of the hour to check in, she said she'd asked her superior and i was given permission to go another hour and see where i was at once that was over.

well... that was when the action began. i started to feel really unwell and went into the bathroom, cried for a bit to doug and then came back to the bed. then boom, it all happened at once. huge contractions began... i was fully dilated and had to start pushing. i know now, my full labour period was a very brief 17 minutes, which left all the midwives in complete shock... and my baby in the special care nursery! :(

my poor student midwife ash couldn't do anything more than watch as midwives ran about... no one expected it to happen so quickly, so much so in fact that the midwife (sam) who was looking after me had gone to have her lunch break while nothing was happening, left me with another midwife (georgia) and walked in just in time to catch the baby. my entire labour and delivery happened within that half hour period. nuts!

baby had a brief feed a while after he was born, then doug had a very short hold but his breathing began to speed up and he was taken off to the nursery to be assessed. i was feeling positive, but eventually hours later had a little cry when it was all apparent that i would not only not be taking him home the following day, but that i wouldn't even be taking him to my room. it's looking to be a long few days ahead.

this pic we snapped prior to being moved to special care is so dear to me, baby alex looks exactly like his daddy as a baby. so so cute!

being assessed in special care by the lovely midwives. they were all so amazing and reassuring. i'm so grateful we were in a good place to be cared for so well.

still pregnant...

yes, i am still pregnant. i just hit 41 weeks and it seems baby k is more than happy to stay put. i keep praying i'll go into natural labour, as i do not want to be induced again, but nothing seems to be happening. i've had my feet and ankles massaged by a very talented friend that swears i'll go into labour within three days (twice!), but still no movement from bub.

we had our appointment at the hospital yesterday and i was booked in for induction this thursday... i think i may just have to resign myself to the fact that i'll never go into labour on my own and that all of my babies are going to be removed at the convenience of the hospital. sigh. i still have 2 days during which this could happen, but as negative as it sounds, i don't like my chances... i mean it's not the end of the word, as long as he arrives safe, that's all that matters!

i must admit though, i am starting to get uncomfortable... it's starting to ache, it's hard to get up and i feel like i've doubled in size in the last week (absolutely not true as you can see from the pics) but i am still okay. being pregnant this time around has been the easiest, i haven't been sick, i haven't been too tired and the best bit, i've been able to tolerate gluten and dairy with no issues...

i guess it's all a matter of time, let's wait and see what happens, but no matter what, i guess he'll be here on thursday sometime!  can't wait to meet this little one ♥

fully cooked!

well - this baby is 100% cooked and ready to go. 40 weeks down and ready to meet us any day. it's all just a waiting game now, but i am truly praying that i don't have to be induced again! i can't believe the day has actually arrived... it seems like i have been pregnant for so long, yet the time has really passed quickly. thank goodness!

these kids are very excited to meet their baby brother.. so watch this space and hopefully he'll be here sooner than later! ♥

stake conference - (39 weeks)

baby kendall is 39 weeks today, almost ready to meet us!

we had stake conference yesterday and i decided to get what i am hoping is my second last pregnant photo in front of the temple. it reminded me of that scripture from the bible:

"train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." 

- proverbs 22:6

i am hoping from my example as a mother that my baby will have a love for the gospel and especially for the temple the way these two do. i remember when we went to dianella ward (our stake centre chapel is on the same block as the temple, common in australia where we have the smaller style temples) madeline used to sit in her carseat waiting for her first glimpse of the angel moroni as we turned the corner to the chapel and used to put her little fist to her mouth and make a doodoooo noise like she was blowing a trumpet. it was the sweetest thing!

i truly will be trying to raise my children in the way that they should go. ♥

matchy match! (34 weeks )

here we are... 6 weeks to go and still feeling good. madeline got dressed for church this morning and insisted she was wearing her "skirt that matches your dress mum" and that i needed to wear mine too. i happily obliged and it absolutely made her day... i just wish it was that easy to make her happy all the time!!

maddie is going to be such a good big sister... she is super excited about her baby brother arriving soon and i know she will help so much. maybe this having a 7 year old and a baby thing won't be so bad after all! fingers crossed!

baby kendall has an impromptu 'photoshoot"

last week at my midwife appointment, we found out that my fundal height (basically the height of your belly during pregnancy after the half way point) hadn't changed since my last appointment, two weeks prior. although i am fairly certain (as was the midwife) that this would have been caused by the bout of gastro i'd had, i was booked in for another ultrasound, to confirm that baby k was happy and growing away without any issues. so off we went this morning.

seems as though our ultrasound tech moonlights as a comedian, as when i asked him if he could confirm that baby k was indeed a boy, we were given this printout with a pic of his boy bits, labelled complete with little arrows. oh did we have a laugh at that!

seems all is well, hes comfortable, happy and most importantly the right size... ready to meet us in just under two months time. exciting stuff!!