More pics (5 Weeks)

Afternoon nap and snack

After a really rough two weeks Arvesito finally started to turn around this last week. Unfortunately he has a bit of colic but medicine is making him feel much better. Poor little guy has been so miserable the last few weeks.

Arvesito is 1 Month Old

Arvesito was a little angel this first month. He woke up twice to feed at night and would go right back to sleep. My mom was with us this month which made the transition to being a family of 4 that much easier. Arves (Sr.) and I still had enough time to pay a lot of attention to our little girl and therefore she hasn't really been very jealous. Mama Mechi is surely missed and we can't wait for her to come back again.

Emily is in love with her little brother. She asks to hold him anytime she sees him. Whenever he's awake and she can see his eyes she exclaims "He's wake up! Can I hold him?" She loves to give him kisses including a loving variation she calls 'doggy kisses' followed by a good smile. The last few weeks Emily has been holding his hand to touch her face and gets super excited about it. Couldn't ask for a better big sister.

Arvesito is still unaware of what's going on around him; he only has eyes for food like any good Penangite!

My recovery has been amazing and we've been on the go since week 1. Nursing this time around has also been a lot less stressful. I pump twice a day and have a fridge full of milk already. Almost ready to go back to work!

Stats and Milestones
- This little monster gained almost 4lbs in his first month. He's now 10.8lbs! (More than Emily at 2 months)
- 54cm long, up 2cm since birth
- Sneezes 3 times like mami
- Already got his first cold thanks to big sister
- Before the month Arvesito was able to turn his head from side to side when on his tummy and was able to hold his head up for short periods of time

He's the perfect addition to our family; we are in love and couldn't be any happier.

Mastering the piggy

Youth Park at 2 Weeks

A few shots from one of our first outings with little Arves. He seems to enjoy the swings almost as much as his big sister Emily!  New baby = not much time for writing, but enjoy the pics!

 

Baby boy at 2 weeks old

 

Emily requests her sunglasses anytime she gets on the swings and wears them the whole time she's at the park.


Excited to see what's ahead!

 

More pictures are uploaded here.

1 Week Old

A few shots to share of little Arves on his first days.



Beautiful, but grumpy baby boy

The real baby Arves

Happy big sister and Daddy

Arves' Birth Story

Sometime Friday August 24 I started to feel different contractions to the Braxton Hicks I had been getting for the last week or so. I joked with a few friends at work that I didn't think I was going to make it through the weekend.

Saturday started with painful contractions/cramping but nothing regular enough for us to worry about or change our fully packed weekend plans.

I made breakfast and we all headed rug shopping at little India. Whenever I had a contraction it made me a bit sick to my stomach and I had to put Emily down if I was carrying her. 39 weeks pregnant and I still carry my little girl. She's still my baby and I'm not ready to give that up yet!

I put Emily down for her nap and had some pretty painful contractions while singing her lullabies but once again not close enough for me to worry much about. While she was taking her nap I went shopping at Gurney Plaza and got her a baby present as well as some last minute breastfeeding supplies.

By the time I got back home Emily was awake and we were off to another Hari Raya Open house celebration at our friend Nizam's house. While at Nizam's contractions got a bit more painful and regular but I still refused to time anything until Arves started to notice I was in pain. They were about 8 mins appart at 5:30. We left Nizam's at 6:30 to hurry home and put Emily to bed so we could meet some friends for dinner. On our drive back we briefly discussed whether we should go out to dinner but I refused to go to the hospital. I thought dinner would be a nice way to keep my mind off of it all.

At dinner contractions were VERY regular. Every 6 mins so I would have to stop talking and put my head down to work through another contraction for about a minute and continue chatting away. I wasn't able to eat much but conversation definitely kept my mind off of the pain. By the time we were done with dinner contractions had jumped to 4 minutes apart and we decided to give our doctor a heads up since I was planning a water birth and they needed time to fill up the pool. We walked home from the restaurant which was about 3 blocks away working through very painful contractions. Walking felt very good though.

By the time we got home I was in a lot of pain and we knew we had to go to the hospital so we asked our friend Tim to come home since he was going to stay with Emily while we were at the hospital. As soon as we opened the door to the house Emily woke up screaming my name as if she knew I was in pain. Arves went to put her back down while I worked on packing her bag while working through more contractions. I was in so much pain that I started throwing up after each contraction. Within minutes Tim was at our house and Emily was back asleep so we rushed to the hospital. This was the longest drive of my life and sitting in the car was misserable. Once we finally made it to the hospital I kept asking for them to "GIVE ME MY DRUGS", my desire of delivering without medicine was completely forgotten; crushed by the amount of pain I was in. They checked me and said there wasn't time for any medicine or pool; I was already at 10 cm and the baby was ready to come out. The doctor just barely made it in time and the baby was out in three pushes. I delivered in less than 30 minutes of arriving to the hospital; still in the dress I came in and the doctor didn't have time to change either; my water broke as the baby was coming out ruining the doctor's shoes.

Stanley Arves Stolpe was 7 lbs and 21 inches long.
Born at 12:07AM on August 26 in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

4-Day Adventure in Bali, Indonesia



At 33 weeks and taking advantage of yet another holiday we decided to go to Bali for our last trip as a family of 3. This was our first time traveling on Malaysia Airlines and it was a great experience, worth the little extra investment.

Bali is famous for its rich culture and friendly people. We were surprised to find temple after temple when driving around town. A lot of them are open to the public but most are a family heritage or are now in ruins. Everywhere we went people were very accomodating and were very eager to start conversation, maybe because of my big belly.

We stayed at the beach at the Breezes Bali Resort and SPA which was just a short walk from the beach and had plenty of good restaurants around. Emily loved playing on the waves and pretenting to be chased by them. She also still loves the sand; she was even able to drew rainbows after watching a Dora episode with rainbows; we were so surprised she remembered that and that her drawing actually was pretty accurate!


Loving the sand



Pure joy!

 Arves got to enjoy some surfing lessons even though we have no pictures to prove it. He enjoyed playing around in the waves and was exhausted by the end of the day.
The next day we decided to go exploring around the island and visit a few temples. We hired a driver for the day which is THE way to go, traffic is horrible and the streets are very confusing. Having a driver meant that we didn't have much to worry about other than a few translation issues. We went to Ubud and visited the famous rice fields and a few of the temples.

Emily loved running around at the temples

For some of the temples is required you wear a sarong so we decided to invest in one each and Arves has been wearing it ever since. I call it a skirt, he calls it a sarong; we all know what it is.

At the end of the day we visited the Tanah Lot temple which had a pretty cool setup although a bit too commercialized for our taste.

Tanah Lot Temple

Tanah Lot

The final day we enjoyed another relaxing day at the beach and hoped we had more time for just relaxing. Lesson learned - We realized how much we enjoyed playing by the water and decided it was not worth the stress to drive around to visit temples just because we felt like we had to.

The rest of our pictures are on Picasa at this link.