Having three kids means that now three people can scream at me simultaneously and throw tantrums in stores, and need their shoes put on over and over, and throw food on my floor, and tell me they hate me when I announce it's nap time. Why am I increasing the size of this demographic?!!!

Three's a crowd

I'm never taking 3 kids anywhere again. Hyrum tipped over my shopping cart at the fabric store. And my 3 week old infant was IN IT. Hyrum was screaming, Clara was wailing, and I couldn't unlatch her car-seat from the fallen cart, so I was pulling up twisted shopping cart pieces as I tried to free my baby from the wreckage. It was not pretty.

And we weren't even having fun before that.

Clara

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

My life is very much like a Children's Book. Have you read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? Whenever I want to go somewhere, I feel like I'm in that book, but in a much, much shorter version.

If I want to leave the house then first I must feed the baby. After I feed the baby I will have to change her diaper. When her diaper is changed, I'll have to get my other children ready. Once Brielle and Hyrum are ready to get in the car I'll have to re-change Clara's diaper. By the time Clara has a new diaper, and I put her into her car seat, one of the other children will need to be cleaned up from some incident or another. Once that child is cleaned up, and I put them in the car, then Clara will be waking up to eat again. So I'll have to feed the baby.........

It's a vicious cycle.

The Delivery

As the doctor left the room he told the nurses to "Call me before you see ears."

I thought it was funny.

I didn't realize he was serious. But he was. Very serious. Incidentally, he didn't quite make it, instead he walked in with just enough time to shout "STOP PUSHING", throw a robe on, and catch as Clara came out.

Sadly, that was the ONLY quick part about this pregnancy, the labor was longer than my other two labors PUT TOGETHER!!

Clara didn't breathe right away, so she was whisked over to the baby warmer where they bagged her (forced oxygen with a bag valve mask) for a few moments as several different nurses whipped out cell phones to demand more nursery staff STAT. Fortunately, by the time the 4 extra medical people rushed in, Clara was breathing on her own.

Previously Hyrum had been my largest baby at 7 pounds 13 ounces, but Clara beat his weight by a full pound! So many rolls and dimples, she looked quite different from my other infants. Clara is also our shortest baby, at 19 and a half inches.

What's in a name?

We chose the name Clara for our daughter because we wanted a family name, and out of the several family names we looked at, that was the one we liked the most. Clara was the name of my great-grandmother, and the middle name of Russell's great grandmother. Plus ever since I first saw the Nutcracker at the age of 9 (the women on my mother's side go every Christmas, it's tradition) I've loved the name Clara.

For the middle name we went through a LOT of options, but in the end Russell really wanted something with "belle" at the end; either Annabelle, or Isabelle, or just Belle, so that we could call her Clara-Belle as a nick name.

So there ya have it! The inside details behind the name Clara Isabelle.

First bath

The helpers