^^Off to a great, highly photogenic start with this first picture as a family of 4!

It's been a pretty great first week home with our Alice girl! (I have a couple great nicknames in mind but I'm waiting to get to know her personality better to see if one of them will stick.) My parents flew in on Sunday morning and were able to stay a little over a week. This was a godsend. Made for the best first-week-home ever. Jack, having been an only child up until this point, was craving attention, and boy did my parents deliver. My dad must have played 4,000 rounds of tag, checkers, and chess. And he was actually successful in teaching Jack the rules and now Jack is like, actually pretty good chess competition? My mom also must've played 4,000 games with Jack. It was wonderful and much needed to be able to spend most of the week resting, recovering, and snuggling my newborn. Mom also cooked all the meals all week, and wow, *chef's kiss*. She outdid herself. She even made us a chicken pot pie from scratch to throw in the oven after they had gone home. An earth angel, that mom of mine. My dad too--they were both so cute and amazing at getting Alice to sleep. Also Dad glued our crib back together. Jack was pretty rough on it his last few months in the crib and a few of the spindles came loose. It remains to be seen if it will be sturdy enough to hold Alice. If not we'll get a new one but I think it's going to do fine. 

Alright, there are too many photos from our week to organize them into chronological order, so I'll just kind of bounce around and caption as I go:
^^Snapped a few sleepy newborn pics during a nap. Was going for fall vibes, but I think this color combo ended up Christmas vibes. Not mad about it. 
 ^^Mom and Dad's last night with us. We had a pizza party and watched a movie, and Jack was pretty sad going to bed knowing Grandma and Grandpa would be going home. His last request of the night was a picture of all of us together on the couch. Savvy was required to participate too haha.
^^I somehow had it in me to join the family for an afternoon at a beach on the Sound. I'm definitely not feeling comfortable recovery-wise these days, but holy cow. It's been miles better than my recovery with Jack. With Jack I needed to be bedridden and on Percocet for quite a while, and even that didn't control the pain very well. This time around I'm mostly doing ok on just Ibuprofen and Tylenol. Incredible. Maybe I'll be fully recovered within 3 months instead of a year?? Feeling cautiously optimistic.
^^At the end of our beach day, an ice cream truck drove by and my dad introduced Jack to the magic within. This is a great time of year for Jack to learn about ice cream trucks, since the season's about over. Of all the dozens of colorful character ice creams, Jack chose a plain vanilla ice cream bar with a chocolate shell lol. He had no regrets, especially not as he took bites out of everyone else's ice cream bars as well. 
^^A quintessential PNW beach. Rocky shores, tall trees off in the distance, and tons of driftwood piled everywhere. 
^^Jack making "boats" from the driftwood.
^^Jack's very first time holding baby Alice! My heart melted. Look at that proud big brother smile! I was so glad my mom suggested and that he was excited to hold her. On our first day back home he was still apprehensive and I didn't want to push it. But this was day 2 and he was feeling a lot more excited about baby. So far he's handling everything like a champ! It's going to be tough when I'm the only adult at home and he has to entertain himself more often, but it will be good for him. And for now he's so excited to come see her first thing in the morning and kiss her goodbye on his way off to preschool. I love how he always greets her with, "Hi, babyyyyy!" and asks me, "Isn't baby Alice so cute?" 
^^lol. I think I have a similar picture of baby Jack as a grumpy little lamb.
^^Nursing leggies. Breastfeeding has also been a much improved experience this time around compared to last time. Alice has never had trouble with latching and between her big appetite and my silicone Haakaa, my milk supply is better now at one week postpartum than it EVER got with Jack. Feeling very grateful for that, even though we're still very much in the ouchie phase of nursing. 
^^Tired but feeling happier than I thought could be possible at 4 days postpartum, so I had to capture this moment in the sunshine on our back patio, sitting with surprisingly little pain and eating a blackberry pie fresh out of the oven, made by my mother from berries they picked just up the road from our house. Long live blackberry season. Long live September! (Now that we've got the childbirth part out of the way.) Oh also, next time you're gonna have a baby, get yourself a cheap zip-up dress/robe from Amazon. The actual only thing I want to wear postpartum. With Jack I legitimately nearly passed out trying to get dressed in my going home outfit of jeans and a sweater. Had to lay down with my legs elevated for an hour after that before they'd discharge me. This time I went with the zip-up robe option. 
Took Jack to get his soccer pictures! Regretted it big time within 20 minutes. Ended up standing in a line for an hour and the pain was rough. Jared got done with work in time to show up and play soccer with Jack a little bit at the end. He went to work all this last week since my parents were here, but he's using his vacation days to take the rest of this week and next week off! Very happy about and grateful for this setup. I should be feeling more like myself and more able to do preschool drop offs by the end of next week. 
^^No we did not go to church yesterday. Yes we did wear dresses. Pants 4never.
^^Um??? Excuse me with this dimple??
^^I want this nap for myself every day forever. Mostly she sleeps in a bassinet by our bed (and she's only been waking up once or twice a night! I'm shook!!), but this morning she fell asleep nursing in my bed and she looked too cozy not to snap a pic. 
And last but CERTAINLY not least . . . at our first car dealership ever, test driving our first family car ever! We've spent the last decade grateful to have no car payments, driving Jared's 16-year-old Honda Accord and my grandmother's 26-year-old Honda Accord we bought cheap off my brother. They have served us very well and gotten us around, but the 16-year-old Honda is having transmission issues and the 26-year-old Honda is starting to randomly die in the middle of the road more and more often, so it's only a matter of time. When Jared installed two carseats in the back of our car and then tried to figure out a way to pick up my parents from the airport, a switch flipped for him and now we're in the active car-hunting process. I've been researching cars all year to narrow it down to a few good options for our family, knowing we'd be at this point pretty soon. And here we are--it's wild! Mostly I was shocked that my body was able to go car shopping at less than 2 weeks postpartum. That's my biggest celebration here haha. 

Our top choice right now is a Palisade SE or SEL. It is not a great time to be car shopping, but honestly who knows if/when it will get better. Used cars are often just as expensive as new cars and don't come with warranties, so we're wincing at the sticker shock and figuring it out. We decided to look at mid-size SUVs with a third row that could easily be folded down and used as cargo space most of the time, but then popped up when carpooling or driving with grandma and grandpa. Wanted something that could handle snow well and potentially tow a small camper someday in the distant future. We LOVED the Palisade we test drove. It also consistently ranks in the top 3 for mid-size SUVs and is a great value in its category. At this point probably the only decision left is if we want to stick with the basic model and have cloth seats, or go a level up so we can have leather. My only hesitation is that their "leather" is called "H-Tex Leatherette" and the research I'm doing indicates that it might scratch/flake off easily. In which case, as much as we'd prefer to have leather with kids, we might choose to go with the base model and cloth seats. Someone persuade me one way or the other. Anyone out there have Palisade and love/hate it? Or anyone out there with a Hyundai that has H-Tex seats and can vouch for how it does or doesn't hold up? Let me know!
Newborn Heaven Photo Dump

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Alice Lark Lambert <3

(Jared's favorite girl name + my favorite girl name. Jared has always been so in love with the name Alice and I'm not as hung up on Lark so it was an easy call to do it this way. I always wanted to do flower middle names, but decided to go ahead and use my fav Lark because Larkspur is an excellent flower. Also "Lark" is pretty close to "Laura," so now we've got a Jack Jared and an Alice Lark. Perf.)

She's here! Born Friday September 16 at 4:38 p.m. 7 lbs 6 ounces, the exact same weight as big brother when he was born. 

She is an absolute sweetheart. Very mellow. A natural breastfeeder. Pretty great sleeper so far. Basically the opposite of colicky newborn Jack, poor lil guy. We are in love. 

Getting her earthside was not fun. We'll just say "4 hours of pushing" and "many failed epidurals" and leave it at that for now. I was going to post her birth story this week but the outline alone is turning into a novella. It's going to take some time to write it out, but I really want to, just as much for me to process it as for you to be able to read it. So, hopefully sometime in the next week or two that will be my post. (It's nothing too traumatizing, just was a very painful experience.) For now, this is an announcement of our sweet, sleepy, happy, healthy, beautiful baby girl. Worth every minute of nausea and feeling like I was being run over by a train during labor. Baby and mom are both doing well! I have a second degree tear so I'm not SUPER comfy, but all things considered, feeling pretty good. I'll pull out my nice camera sometime this next week and hopefully get some nice newborn shots to share. Then maybe I'll finally announce our pregnancy and baby on social media haha. Now excuse me while I get back to the newborn snugs!

Introducing . . .

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It's been a great Monday! (The 38-weeks-pregnant version of "great," of course.) I spent the morning building forts and organizing the nursery. Then I had an OB appointment (baby's doing great), and then straight to Jack's first soccer practice of the season. He was in HEAVEN. That boy loves running around and playing with kids his age. He starts preschool tomorrow, so basically it's the best week of his life. I'm so glad he's getting these routines in place before baby girl gets here and shakes everything up in a week or so. 

Glad I forced a quick maternity photo shoot in on Labor Day last week. Honestly I didn't have the time or energy for it, but knew time was running out and I'd regret not having any nice pictures to remember this pregnancy. So I handed Jared my camera (which Jack has been messing with for months so the settings were probably questionable), and had him snap a few. The lighting was harsh and Jack corrupted the memory card the first half of the pictures were on, but I'm glad we got a few. We'll have to do family pictures here sometime in better lighting--the location is so pretty and it's 5 minutes from our house. 

Maternity Pictures

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I am living the 9-months-pregnant Sunday afternoon of my dreams over here. We've learned that any car ride lasting longer than half an hour gives me intense, painful cramps/contractions, so when Jared and Jack drove down to Woodinville today for Jared's brother's priesthood ordination I opted to stay home (especially since there will be many other long drives this week for appointments). Having a quiet house to myself is already heaven after a summer of no preschool and Jared working until nearly 7:00 most nights. Add in a fireplace and the smells of authentic Italian bolognese slow-cooking in the oven all afternoon . . . it's a dream over here right now. A painful, uncomfortable, but still oh-so lovely 9-months-pregnant dream. 

This week instead of dragging you through the rest of the drudgery that is an inventory all my new aches and pains now that I've reached THAT point in my pregnancy, I'll just share some of my cooking successes this past week with you. Yer welcome. 

1. These Sheet Pan Pineapple Shrimp Tacos. Half Baked Harvest recipes are hit or miss for me. I truly think the reason she's basically the #1 food blogger in the country is because she does gorgeous styling and food photography. That said, these shrimp tacos were pretty dern easy to make and were restaurant quality. I used canned pineapple for the salsa instead of fresh because I can not be bothered to cut up a pineapple at this time. 

https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/jalapeno-pineapple-shrimp-tacos/

2. This Kale Caesar Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Chickpeas. Another Half Baked Harvest success! I'm not usually a salad for dinner type of gal. Except for when I'm pregnant and only in the mood for meat about 20% of the time these days. This salad, and the dressing, smacks. It was too much work to be just a side salad--next time I will double it and have it for a few days of lunches. (If you hate kale, maybe try different greens. I'm the girl who weirdly loves kale tho.)

https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/kale-caesar-salad/

3. This Homemade Eggnog. Too soon? Not for Jack. The word "eggnog" somehow came up in conversation and he didn't know what it was. Long story short I became required to make eggnog immediately (Jack insisted and I was too pregnant to put up a fight). I did some quick research to try and find the best eggnog recipe on the entire internet (this is how I do almost all my meal planning by the way lol--if it's not guaranteed to be the very best recipe the internet has to offer I don't want it). Coming from someone who can generally take or leave eggnog, I don't know if I'll ever have eggnog a different way again. This was SO good hot off the stove, and also after it had chilled. Another recipe I'll be doubling or tripling next time. 

https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/homemade-eggnog/

4. Not going to link these recipes until I've tinkered a bit more. But. The bolognese currently cooking up for tonight, and the focaccia bread I made for a bbq last week. LIFE CHANGING. The focaccia mostly just because I'd never made it before and now I can, not because it's the best I've ever had. Usually cooking has my heart and I don't love baking, but this pregnancy I am in my carbs era so I intend to master the focaccia before I get into pasta making. Exclusively so I can have some life-changing homemade pasta to go along with the life-changing 4-hr bolognese currently simmering in the kitchen. I've been sneaking tastes and I can already tell my life will never be the same. Next time you come to my house I will be feeding you bolognese. I could cry I'm so happy about being able to cook right now. Never ever got to this point last pregnancy. Blessings!

Ok that's all! Here's an *aesthetic* picture from last fall so there can be a thumbnail for this post. Happy September!



Chef's Kiss Sunday

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