Introducing Zachary Braden Molyneux

So I'm about 18 days late blogging about the birth of our sweet baby, Zachary Braden Molyneux. But I have been trying to collect all the photos taken and post about it. I've also been trying to survive having three children and taking care of a newborn. I haven't had much time to myself to blog these days. If you are interested in reading about the birth story, here it is. Otherwise, you can just glance of the pictures.

With my older kids, I was able to go into labor myself and reported to the hospital when the contractions came. This time we were fortunate to plan the event since Logan's mom flew in right before my due date. She arrived on Halloween, Oct. 31 and we attended Leah's school Halloween party and helped her and her friends make a cute craft. That night Logan and his mom took the kids trick or treating around the neighborhood, and I sat and waited to hand out candy. It was my last night to be pregnant.

It was nice knowing ahead of time when to the go into the hospital and have someone right there at our house watching the older kids. The down side of getting induced was all the waiting that happened. I thought it would happen a little quicker because it was my third baby, but it was pretty much all day. We arrived at the hospital at 5 a.m.  - that's right, bright and early - on Thursday, Nov. 1. They hooked me all up and then we sat there. Logan brought his computer and was able to do a little work for school while we waited. And I watched T.V. and played on my phone.

By 11 or 12:00, my doctor came in to break my water to help move things along and soon after I was having stronger contractions so I decided to get my epidural. After that medicine kicked in, I was able to take a good nap. That sure didn't happen with my other two births. When the doctor came to check on me after I woke up, I was sure that I had progressed more than the last time she came in. But I think I was still only dilated to 4 cm so I was pretty discouraged. She came back around 3:00 and decided to bump the dosage of pitocin up some more so I would finally progress quicker. I think that finally did the trick because after 4:00, I went from 5 cm to 10 cm in about an hour.

By this time, I was starting to feel all the contractions and asked the anesthesiologist to come back in give me some more medication. But for some reason, I was only feeling the numbness in my legs and was not getting any relief from contractions in my pelvic area. Then by 5:00 I was starting to feel like I needed to push. They called the doctor and she came running from her office across the street. And after pushing for about 15 minutes, I delivered our sweet baby boy. He was 8 lbs and 19 inches long. Zachary's middle name is after Logan's brother, Braden, and we waited until Zach was born to surprise his brother about it. Braden was thrilled to hear the news, and Logan was emotional about telling him.

And now I guess I finally got to feel what it was like to give birth naturally. It took me 3 hours to push with Leah and an hour to push with Cameron so I was so glad that Zachary came so quickly. And the other great thing about it was the recovery time. I felt back to normal in a week and this was so great being able to do activities with my kids and my mom. She came to visit us on Nov. 6, the day Logan's mom flew back to Utah, and it was so nice to have help from both of the grandmas.

Now on to the pictures:

They were so sweet holding Zachary and touching him so gentle. They have been great older siblings.

 Leah really wanted to help Logan change his diaper.

Little Zach with his eyes open. It was one of the few times he opened his eyes after we brought him home. 

The day we came home from the hospital and began our life as a family of 5! 

Halloween festivities

 Logan's talented mom did some amazing costumes for the kids this year. They picked what they wanted to be several months ago, and she has been working on them since then. She sent them the package of costumes last week, and they couldn't wait to open it and try them on. Leah even got a Jasmine wig and matching crown to match her outfit. And Cameron wore his Batman costume for several days straight.

Logan finally went in to the eye doctor and got a new prescription for a stylish pair of glasses and contacts. 

For Family Home Evening this week, we baked some Halloween sugar cookies and let the kids frost them. They thought it was so much fun to decorate them with little candy eyes and sprinkles.

 And last of all, Leah carved her pumpkin at school with her class, and I got to volunteer to help them weigh and measure their pumpkins as well as pull out all the seeds. I had mild contractions that whole day from all the activities we did but I didn't want to miss Leah doing this with her class. It's too bad I left my phone in the class room when they went outside and didn't get any pictures of them working on the pumpkins. Cameron had fun watching the kindergarten class carving their pumpkins and was excited when Logan carved his pumpkin today. And we finally got some colder weather this weekend so I had to make Cameron put on some pants and a long sleeved shirt even though he was adamantly against it.

Austin Zoo trip

Last  Saturday we went to the Austin Zoo and Animal Sanctuary thanks to a Groupon that I bought a couple of months ago. I had been waiting for the weather to finally cool off and we couldn't have picked a better morning to go. The zoo had lots of fun fall and Halloween decorations around the zoo which made it extra fun. The best part was that Logan was able to come with us. He has been quite busy with school starting this fall and his multiple part-time jobs so finding a free day with him was heaven for the kids. 

The Austin Zoo is not super fancy or big but I love going and seeing these animals that have been rescued or given to the zoo because they were no longer being taken care of. And you can really see the animals up close.

They wanted to take a silly picture with this duck. 

Leah looks like she was zoning out in front of the bear building, and Cameron wanted to do his classic head bent to the side when I'm taking pictures. 

This was Logan's first time to the zoo and the kids' and my second time there, and he had fun looking at the animals with the kids. 

    

Cameron has always liked tigers and lions since he was little and his favorite animals at the zoo were these beauties. It was fun to actually see them up walking around since most of the time they are lying down taking a nap.

We were amazed that this enormous Yorkshire big at the zoo. He probably outweighed all four of us. 

The zoo has peacocks and chickens that roam around the zoo all by themselves, and Leah thought it was cool when they flew up to the top of this fence. 

This is what I got from Cameron when I pulled my camera out to take a picture. He is quite the character.

The cute bear was sitting right up to the fence when we came by his enclosure like he almost wanted to have a conversation with us. 

We saw this mother peacock with her cute chicks following next to her around the zoo.

The kids' favorite part of the zoo is at the barnyard area where you can feed the goats, llamas, sheep and deer some food. I showed Cameron how to hold out his hand flat so the animals could eat from his hand but some of the time, he just kind of threw the food to them because he was scared they would bite him.

He got the hang of it towards the end. 

   

The only bad part of our outing at the zoo was when we tried to sit down the picnic tables behind Leah in this picture, and there were a bunch of wasps flying around our food. The kids were getting freaked out about it so we kept trying to change spots. We couldn't see to find an open place without the wasps so we ended up taking our sack lunches to eat them in the car.

 Another fun part of the day was finding a frozen yogurt shop called Froyoyo in Southwest Austin and stopping to grab some. The kids loved picking out a flavor to share and putting the toppings on it. It reminded me a lot of where we used to live in Utah where the frozen yogurt shops were all over the place.

Leah's field trip - Crowe's Nest Farm

 Leah and her cute little kindergarten class got to ride the bus to the Crowe's Nest Farm last Friday for their first field trip. Cameron and I along with our good friends, Amanda and Brandon, decided to meet the group there to tour the farm. Even though it doesn't look like from any of the photos, Cameron had a good time hanging out with Leah and her friends and seeing all the animals. He just wasn't in the mood to smile. Leah paired up with her cute friend, Danica, who I have heard a lot about from Leah. She couldn't go any where without keeping track of Danica and seeing everything together.

Cameron was telling me about the big ugly bug in this picture and saying how yucky it was. Along with this bug, we saw tarantulas, snakes, lizards, and turtles  inside the barn and watched a video about how the farm got started and what they do there.

Cameron listened very well to the directions from the farm workers who said to keep their hands behind their backs while looking at the animals because you don't want to get your hands bitten off. He is normally a very hands-on boy so I was happy that he would follow the directions.

He also looked like he fit in with the kindergarten class with how tall he is now. He's not even four yet, so that will tell you something.

 This is where we sat and listened to Farmer Eric tell us about their dairy cow, Bella, and how the milk machine vacuums the milk from the cows' udders and stores it in a big container. I don't know why Cameron was frowning but he enjoyed the demonstration too.  Maybe he was a little jealous that Leah was paying attention to her friend.

 We got to see these longhorn cattle up close and we were told that the big bull was the daddy of all the calves born on the farm.

 This was a big highlight of the tour where we got to see the dairy cow, Bella, and her one-day-old calf.

 We also got to ride on a hay ride to see other animals in the fields including ostriches and bison. Another mom snapped a picture of us, and I was so glad to have a picture of us in our matching Shark shirts.

 Leah's favorite part of the farm was this section called Faerie Wood where they had little statues and displays of all kinds of fairies in the trees, in little villages. It seemed so magical to all the little girls from  her class.

 My only complaint of the field trip was that the group had to get back to the school by noon for other moms to pick up their kids, and I wished we could have stayed longer there. They had so many fun farm animals like pigs, chickens, goats, llamas, mules, and miniature ponies just to name a few. I think we might have to go back another day to spend more time there.