Little sister turns 5

Today is little sister's birthday. She is now 5 years old! That 5 years sure went by fast! We had her family party on Saturday. She loved having family over and eating pizza and root beer - her favorite! She was thrilled with all her presents, and really gets the whole gift thing now. After opening each present she would look at it for a moment, then set it aside and announce "Okay! Next present!" She did remember to say thank you, for the most part! She gets to be the star student in preschool this week, and came home wearing a crown. So fun! She insisted on sourdough pancakes for breakfast (that's my girl!), Old McDonald's for lunch (teehee!) and we will be doing Olive Garden for dinner. She is such a fun little girl who constantly keeps us laughing and on our toes! Not sure if I've ever posted about her birth story, so here it is:

I was scheduled to be induced on a Monday, so we dropped Big sister off at Husband's parents' house the night before. I had contractions throughout the night, and had finally gotten up at 3am because I couldn't lie down anymore. When the hospital called at 8:30 to tell us to come in, the contractions were about 7 minutes apart. I was so glad to go to the hospital right then, 'cuz I didn't want to wait until they were 5 minutes apart to get my epidural! At the hospital, they actually put on my chart spontaneous labor, because the nurse said I would have been coming in on my own in an hour anyway. They got me the epidural around 10am, then started pitocin at 11 to get my contractions going a little stronger. Husband went to get lunch around 12:30, and they turned up my pitocin at that point as well. Husband returned around 1, and by 1:15 they called my doctor. It only took 6 minutes of pushing to push her teeny little body out! She arrived at 1:47pm and weighed in at 6lb, 5oz. She was a good baby from the start, barely crying when they gave her that first shot right after she was born. She did have a hard time maintaining her body temperature for the first couple days, and she fell in love with the warming lamps they kept putting her under, and she had a serious appetite. She drank a lot from the bottle as part of an effort to help her chunk up! By the 2nd day, she was doing just fine. They had me bring her in at 1 week old to make sure she was doing okay, and she had gained a pound. The doctor laughed and said "I guess she's doing fine!" Most babies are barely at their birth weight by 2 weeks old. I think that is why she hated nursing so much, though. She loved that bottle and once I gave in to that fact, she was the easiest baby. She rarely cried and slept through the night by 6 weeks old. During those first few weeks, she slept in her crib in our room, and she wouldn't wake us up with crying. She would just lay there and smack her lips. I got trained to wake up to that pretty fast! I remember during my pregnancy with her that yellow things seemed to jump out at me a lot. I just felt like yellow was her color. This was confirmed when the nurses gave her her first bath. They had never even talked to me or husband before, but after her bath the nurse went to put a pink bow on her head and she looked at husband and said "Oh, no. Yellow is definitely her color." She found a yellow bow and put that on instead. Little sister is a bright, usually very happy and sunshiney (is that a word?) little girl, and yellow is her favorite color. It suits her! You can kind of see the bow in this picture:


But even better in this one with my Dad:


Happy Birthday little sister! We sure love you!