Campin'.

For Memorial Day weekend this year, we went campin'.

I'll admit that camping with toddlers is...harrowing, at times...but it is worth it to build the memories and the relationships. The DeLongs have a regular spot at Penland Lake near Heppner, Oregon. It's a patch of church property that was formerly used as a scout camp, and is now more or less in a state of neglect but still totally great for family glamping. It's a great secluded spot close to the lake - no reservations required, no neighbors too close by.

We went fishing! Quinn was absolutely fearless and wanted to touch every single fish we caught, and release them back into the lake by herself (of course. She is three years old). We caught frogs with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Will and played with their new black lab puppy Oliver. Lisa took me mushrooming! Less psychedelic than it sounds, but don't write it off yet. We searched for Morelles (pictured above). I am told that some seasons they are plentiful, and some seasons they are more scarce. This was a 'more scarce' type of season, which made it strangely addicting. Basically you just walk through the forest very slowly, scouring the ground for the Morelles. They blend in really well so you have to pay close attention. Once you find one, it's hard to want to stop looking. And fried up in olive oil and garlic salt...oh. My. GOSH. I can truly say that I have never before put anything like that into my mouth and I will be dreaming about it until next year.

There was, of course, all the usual glamping goodness: dutch oven meals, "big breakfast" (breakfast, DeLong style - potatoes with Montreal steak seasoning, fried eggs and lots and LOTS of pepper bacon), campfires, and freezing to death in 20-something degree weather at night (oh wait - that was just Spens & I in the tent. The girls were in the heated trailer, thankfully! The second night was much warmer).

Thanks DeLongs!

Reed is two.

This girl turned two on April 29th!!

We had a party, of course, with her people, cake, and Reed Bingo (juice, kitty, mommy, swings, REED BINGO!). Reed is the sweetest. She is a hand holder and a smoocher and a snuggler. She is the dancing queen. She has the cutest little 'thank you' you've ever heard. You might find yourself smooching her randomly on the cheek just to see if she is really made of sugar. She is that sweet.

She is also, er, um, 'very good at advocating for herself.' By that, I mean that if she wants something and she is not getting it right away, you will know about it. You will know about it in a very loud and very intense and Emily Rose-like way. What can we say? She is a toddler. :)

Happy birthday to our sweet Reed.
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We moved.

And Spenser claims that we will NEVER do it again! Ha. Seriously though...we are glad to be on the other end of the stressful process and settled in our new home. After he graduated from Portland State, Spenser started job searching and when his company offered to transition him into a position more compatible with his long-term professional goals, he took it and we decided to stay put for a while.

We got lucky and found a great little house to rent in the town of Newberg. It's a tough rental market up in this area so the stars really aligned for us. The house was originally constructed in 1905 but the owner did a thorough remodel, so it has all the charm...plus proper insulation and lead-free pipes. It is about the same size as our last apartment but the layout is better for active toddlers. Plus, no downstairs neighbors or shared walls (see that last bit about active toddlers, haha).

The girls love the house, and Quinn always says: "We're not going back to our old house." We live within two blocks of the library, community center, movie theater (owned and operated by the same family since the 1930s!), some great restaurants and a bunch of other fun stuff. Come visit us!

Hello again.

I have decided to come out of cyber hiding and maybe start blogging a bit again. Part of the reason I have stayed away is my unwillingness to confront the fact that I did such a poor job of documenting Reed - well, relative to how I documented Quinn anyway - and I'm sure I'll hear about it from her someday. In my defense, Reed has taken about four naps total in her twenty months on this earth so that didn't leave me much time to wax nostalgic online.

We had the above photos taken a few weeks ago by a family friend.

Quinn graduated from nursery and joined the Sunbeams class today. She has an excellent teacher, and by all accounts had a wonderful time and seemed happy. So we're not quite sure why she darted out of the classroom straight into my arms crying her eyeballs out when we picked her up. You know what? Change is hard. And I kind of wanted to start balling too because the best hours of fresh snowfall got spent on the three hour block. Maybe bishop didn't get the memo, but here in Oregon, when it snows, we cancel stuff. That's how we roll.

Reed is a sassy spirit. We love her. She is so kissable - just look at those cheeks. Girlfriend doesn't do a single thing she doesn't want to. Unfortunately that includes getting her diaper changed. That's a pretty epic struggle around here. She is known in our ward as Choir's #1 Fan because after every song they do she jumps up, claps and yells "yeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaah!!" at the top of her lungs. (It's loud. I think about 85% of the ward thinks it's cute and the rest, well, you know, have their opinions about it and how her parents should handle it.)

It's all pretty amazing. And that's all for now.

Baby Reed's arrival.

This is the story of Reed's birth - may it be joyfully recounted every April 29th around the birthday dinner table! Reed entered the world in a much less uncertain and dramatic way than Quinn; due to a number of considerations, my ob-gyn and I decided that scheduling a repeat Cesarean for this baby was the safest and best option, so we had April 29th circled on the calendar for a month or so beforehand. We had a growth ultrasound at 39 weeks that showed the baby measuring large again, so I felt good about our plan. We got up that morning and took Quinn over to my mom's house, where Whitney and Sam would be taking care of her for the duration of our hospital stay (thanks guys!!). Then it was off to the hospital.

We got checked in at 10:00 a.m. and the nurse inserted my IV and chatted with us for a bit. Then the nurse anesthetist came in and gave us the run down on how everything would proceed in the OR. Around noon, it was time to head down! We walked to the OR, me pushing my IV and the nurse holding a second gown over my back so I didn't moon everyone on the way down. Spenser joined us after he got dressed. They got right to work inserting my spinal. They gave me some sort of numbing agent first, which was probably the worst part of the whole process - it felt like I got shot in the back with a staple gun, then painful burning up and down my back. But shortly thereafter I was numb from the waist down and things got going. My obstetrician, Dr. Dion, did the delivery, with Dr. Hoffman assisting.

It is really interesting to listen to the surgeons and nurses and anesthesiologists do their thing (I guess a Cesarean is probably one of the few surgeries where the patient is conscious enough to witness that sort of interaction). Eventually I heard my doctor say "delivering the baby," felt an enormous pressure, and heard her first little wails. That is the most incredible and humbling feeling, EVER, to know that another little life has just entered the world...and you're accountable for it...wow. With both my babies, I really felt the weight of that when I heard their first cries. Reed DeLong was officially born at 12:29 p.m., weighing 9 pounds 1 oz and measuring 22 inches long!They held her level with my uterus for a few minutes before cutting the cord, then brought her around to give us a look before she got wrapped up and had her assessments. Spenser was able to be with her at that point while they finished up with me.

Reed got an 8 on her first Apgar and an 8 on her second as well. She didn't get a 9 the second time as a result of some respiratory issues (her oxygen saturation levels were a little low). I was told that these issues are pretty common with Cesarean births, because when a baby is born vaginally, the act of passing through the birth canal compresses her lungs and that pressure expels fluid, whereas during Cesarean birth no such squeezing of the lungs really occurs. So this wasn't really too serious of an issue, but they erred on the side of caution and took her to the NICU for a few hours to monitor her oxygen. I was sooooo anxious to snuggle and feed her - but it had to wait. Thankfully, I was pretty out of it due to the lovely intravenous narcotics I was receiving, otherwise it would have been true torture, haha. Also, I had a bad reaction to the spinal and was really sick and throwing up for a few hours, so I was probably pretty useless anyway. Spenser got to be with her the whole time and eventually the three of us got settled in our room.

Things went pretty smoothly for the rest of our hospital stay and we were thrilled and ready to leave by the end of it. People always want to know how Quinn is handling this transition to being one of two, rather than the center of everyone's universe. I would say she is handling it pretty well. She hasn't done anything aggressive toward the baby (or "mei mei," as we have coached her to call her), nor has she done anything particularly sweet and affectionate. For the most part she seems pretty indifferent. :)

I'm biased, but Reed is such a sweet little baby. She hardly every gets really cranked up - she's so mild! - and although she wakes up frequently to eat during the night, she generally goes back to sleep. Ok! Now that you have survived this novella, here are some pictures:

Chasing ducks.

These are some photos from today's outing to the duck pond. I wish that all of you could experience Quinn's joy when we come here - girlfriend goes crazy! She loves the ducks. She runs after them with her arms outstretched, like she really believes she will be able to catch one and give him a big hug! I wish I could get better pictures of it, but she has no interest in accommodating the camera; by the time I am able to sprint in front of her (no small feat in and of itself) crouch down, and focus, she is running off at breakneck speed in another direction.

An update:

We are having another girl!

On December 18th, we went in for our 20-week ultrasound and found out that we are having another girl! And we could not possibly be more excited about that, for a number of reasons. This time around, Spenser's instincts were right - he thought we were having another girl. I thought we were having a boy, reason being that this pregnancy has been a lot different from the first one. It's been easier! I am currently 26 weeks along, and by this point with Quinn my legs and feet were completely swollen and I was on Tums three times a day for the worst heartburn ever...but with this baby, nope! My only real complaints are back pain (stretching, oh the stretching) and restless legs syndrome, which always kicks in at night. Sometimes Spenser has to sit on my legs to keep me from going completely insane! But most importantly, the baby appears to be completely healthy, and the pregnancy is progressing as well as can be expected...and we are very happy about all of that.

The holidays were a great time.

Well, a great AND a busy time! Life was pretty insane for Spenser. In addition to taking a class, he experienced for the first time what having a career in shipping means during the holidays...it means loads of overtime and absolute insanity! But he survived. We absolutely loved having my siblings and their spouses come up to Portland for Thanksgiving, and then we made the trek over to Hermiston for Christmas, which was equally awesome.

We found a new place to live...

...and this is pretty life-changing news for me, because our apartment has a washer and dryer in the unit. Hallelujiah! I have arrived! Haha. We waffled on whether or not we wanted to stay put and make a go of having two kiddos in the one-bedroom we currently occupy, which we thought might be workable and more affordable, or find a two-bedroom. Well, a letter from our current landlord raising the rent on this unit made it silly not to look for more space so we are headed out to Tualitan, very close to Spenser's work. That will be happening in the middle of February. Thanks in advance to everyone who is giving up their Saturday morning to help us haul our junk out there. :)

I hope to post a few more updates soon, particularly about Miss Quinn who is evolving everyday and becoming quite a little person!

A nice moment.

Quinn has a new trick! The video speaks for itself: