Chloe Brenda Marie Partridge

Weighing in at 6 pounds and 11 ounces and standing (or lying) at 18 and 1/2 inches, Chloe Brenda Marie was born October 15, 2008 at 1:37 p.m. She has a head full of dark brown hair and has bright pink skin. Chloe really likes to sleep right now, which is good for me, but I worry she's not eating enough. That's the magic of percocet. I've been trying to keep the meds at a minimum, but I did just have major surgery.

Halle loves her little sister. She decided we could go ahead and name her Chloe. After watching the Disney movie "Twitches" she decided that the baby's name had to be Alex, which was the name of one of the twin witches in the movie. Luckily, we were able to convince her that Chloe was a much better name for her little sister. After the birth her Grandma spoiled her with twin baby dolls and she named one of them Alexis. The other baby's name is Brandy. I don't think that was the name of the other twin in the movie, however.

I came home from the hospital friday night. I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would. I don't really need a lot of meds to keep the pain under control, and I'm up and about without too many complications. I should probably take it easy a little more though.

I decided to breastfeed despite the many complications I had with my first experience, and it's gone surprisingly well, painful, but well. My milk has already come in, but Chloe is so sleepy that I'm producing more than she's eating. I guess it's time to store some milk for the future in case I need it for anything.

Dropping Bomb Bird

You know, this is the first time I've uploaded videos on You Tube. It's only been a few hours and I've already had 10 people look at them. It's kind of exciting and disturbing at the same time.

Feeding the Giraffes

Halle had such a good time feeding the giraffes.

Good Times

Here are the pics that I promised.

First is our trip to the Sedgwick County Zoo.

This is our day at the Science Exploration Place.

You can't see the screen, but they are flying a virtual Wright Bros. plane.

Apparently this took great effort. Ok not really, but you'd think so by the look on my face. Actually, I'm pretty surprised that I was able to get the bubble over my head.

And a few pictures from Halle's 4th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

Halle's all ready for her fairy tale birthday party. Unfortunately there weren't any other kids with us, but that didn't stop us from having a great time!

You had to grab those metal things and it would "shock" you. It really just vibrated very intensely and you had to hang on to them for 30 seconds to get the maximum amount of tickets.

Hey you try it.Halle was so excited to meet Mr. Cheese.

Yes I made that cake. The frosting was supposed to be purple, but I put too much blue in it and I didn't have any more red. Oh well, I'm still proud.

Those are all the fun things that we tooks pictures of. I need to utilize my camera more. Well, at least I will next week with the birth of Halle's little sister. Or Wade will.

As for her name. We know that her first name is going to be Chloe, but her middle name is still under heated debate. It will either be Marie, which is my mom's middle name, or Brenda, which is the name of Wade's professor that set him on his path to grad school. Neither of us want to budge, so she may end up with both. Doesn't Chloe Marie have a much better flow to it though? And besides, Halle's middle name comes from Wade's side of the family, so I think I deserve to choose Chloe's middle name from my side. It's only fair. I guess we'll find out her full name next week.

Next post: Chloe's birth!

I finally did it!

Drum roll please...

Announcing Elisa Partridge's long awaited family blog! (please hold back the applause)

I know that many of you have been wondering what the goings on have been since we left our long time home in Utah, for the Urban life of Wichita, Kansas. Well, since we have been here for nearly 2 months now, you are all in for an earful, er, eyeful.

We arrived in Wichita on Friday, August 8th, and since then, have been very busy getting our lives together here. We've had to find doctor's, insurace, school's, and we are still settling in. I found an OB pretty quickly, but have yet to find Halle a doctor. Since we are living off of student loans and Wade's measly $6000/yr stipend, we had to apply for medicaid, which was expidited for me and baby in utero, but we are still waiting to get medicaid for Halle, and Wade isn't eligible.

Not having medical for Halle, I have had to put off finding her a doctor. I did try in the the past to find her a pediatrician, but even if they were taking patients with medicaid, they had met their quota and would not allow new ones. That has led me to finding a family doctor, but I decided not to attempt it until her medicaid comes through.

As for Wade's insurance, he is able to get his through school for a reasonable price. Now he just needs to find an eye doctor, general physician, and neurologist. I offered to find doctors for him, given his packed schedule, but he insists on finding them on his own. Men...

I have seen my new OB several times now. I really like her. She's been really good at picking up where my last doctor left off. She has looked into past concerns, and she has scheduled my c-section. Why a c-section you ask? Well, Halle was delivered by c-section, and we felt there would be less possible complications if we went ahead and did another one. Halle's sister's delivery is scheduled for October 15th, which is just 2 weeks from tomorrow!

Now, I bet you are wondering what the name is going to be. Well, you'll just have to wait until my next post! Oh, and for those of you who weren't aware, it's a girl, hence "Halle's sister" above.

I have been wanting to get Halle into some sort of educational environment since we got here, but it's turned out to be a difficult task. For one, we can't really afford to pay for her to go to school. Preschool, or Pre-K as they call it here, is free at the public schools, but unfortunately she missed the age cut off to get in this year. I do, however, due to our low income, have the option of getting her into headstart (that's pre-pre-k) but the school she would go to doesn't have any openings as of now, and she has to have her shots up to date, which isn't possible right now because of the medicaid situation. I do try to keep her busy though. I just bought a bunch of stuff for her birthday to teach her the ABC's and 123's, and I take her to a play group 2 or 3 times a week. I don't hear "Mom, I wanna do something..." quite as often anymore.

Before this gets so long that you give up reading, I just wanted to announce one more thing. I have recently been called to be the 2nd counselor, or Enrichment counselor, in the Relief Society in our Ward! This is very intimidating for me since a)I've never been in a position of leadership before, and b)I'm going to have a newborn while I'm doing this! Eek! Luckily, I was on the enrichment committee back in Utah so at least I'm not going in completely clueless.

I hope you find this worth the wait and the time it will take to read. Next post: Fun things we've done since we arrived, complete with pictures and videos! And I promise it will be before the baby is born. Stay tuned!