Another catch-up January through April

I'm so not good at staying on top of my blog. But I'm good at catching up :) Here's some fun stuff that we've been up to the last few months.

Trip to Arizona in January
Jonah had so much fun playing with his cousins. We all love being able to spend time with family.

No fear!

Becca and her cousin, Quinton

Why talk when we can play Uno against each other on our iphones!

The world's best baby holder - Lexi!

My brother loves my kids. This picture makes my heart happy.

Jonah and Grandpa Hal

Yay cousins!

Becca had her baby blessing while we were in Arizona. The blanket is the traditional Lutz family blessing blanket that all of my brothers and sisters and almost everyone one of my neices and nephews have been blessed in. The dress is the one I was blessed in that my mom had made for me. Her cap is a special blessing cap that turns into a blessing hankie and her bracelet was made special for her by her Aunt Misti.

Jonah and cousin, Avery

Before coming home we spent some time in Tucson.

Yeah, these pictures aren't in order. Here's Becca with her blessing shawl on as well. Grammy made that one too.

January 14th my little man turned TWO!!!

This big guy use to fit in my tummy!!!

Jonah LOVES his sister

Tucson again...seriously - how did these get so badly out of order...

Everything's a hat!

Happy 6th Anniversary to us on January 21st!

Brevard County Zoo with Jonah's best bud, Isaac. Jonah really likes the animals so we hope to go as often as possible :)

Jonah needed his daddy :)

Becca started holding things in her hands

Met Daddy for a picnic at the park after work

Jonah loves helping Daddy with projects around the house. It's so cute

The zoo again...

Funny story - we wanted to watch "Extreme Home Makeover" because our friend's family was getting a new house. But the antennae wasn't working so I had to hold it at a very particular angle while sitting in the middle of the room. Good times :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Becca and I got to take a trip to visit Aunt Shannon and her family in Nashville, Tennessee for a long weekend trip.

Haha - more of Jonah helping Daddy

And back to the Tennessee trip

St Patrick's Day. He makes some of the cutest faces

Tennessee again - my cute little nephew who played a super awesome turtle in his school play!

Jonah's new favorite place...the beach!

Some of our friends joined us for a pancake party to celebrate Dwight's 31st birthday in March and taught me how to make a proper pancake!

This is cracks me up...and we're back at the beach...

And back to the pancake party again. lol. These are some of my most favoritist people :) It was a way fun party...and I actually learned out to make good pancakes!

I think I picked the wrong picture - but this one is so cute I'll keep it :)

Jonah got a visit from the Easter bunny!

Oh my goodness! Well...here's proof that my pancakes now rock...

And we're back to Easter again - lol. This is Becca and her good friend Owen. Owen's big brother is Jonah's best bud Isaac - it's all connected :)

Jonah and Isaac checking out their prizes from the easter egg hunt.

I think Jonah and Becca are gonna become great friends!

Happy Easter!

Alright, so that was a quick, very unorganized, update on the last few months. Life is great with our little family. Becca and Jonah keep growing and learning. They are so much fun and make out lives so full and happy. We are truely blessed!

Renshaw Family Christmas letter 2010

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!

What a wonderful year it’s been for us.

At the beginning of 2010 we celebrated two big milestones; Jonah’s 1^st birthday and our 5^th anniversary. What better way to celebrate such great occasions than a vacation! (Especially since Jonah had not yet started walking and still didn’t cost much to travel) So we took a trip to Spain in early February. We spent just under a week in Barcelona and then went on a 9 day Mediterranean cruise that took us to Morocco and the Canary Islands. It was quite an adventure and Jonah did wonderful! We’re looking forward to our next big vacation though it will probably be a while before we do anything as big as that one.

A few months later we found out that a very special person was going to be joining our family, and she has finally arrived! Rebecca Dawn Renshaw was born November 11^th! She was 7 lbs 4 ½ ozs and 19” long. We already feel like she has been a part of our family for much longer than a few months. She looks a lot like Jonah did except that she surprised us with a full head of hair which none of us had when we were born. We fell in love with her the moment we saw her and it wasn’t long before we couldn’t remember what life was like before her arrival.

Jonah was not so sure of Becca at first, but he tolerated her pretty well and quickly grew to love her. He doesn’t like it when she cries and will try to help her get her binkie back in her mouth. It’s not uncommon to find Becca with a teddy bear in her swing that Jonah had put there.

Jonah has grown and changed so much this year! He's a very smart and fun little guy. He started crawling right before the first of the year and he began walking around June. He didn’t really have any sort of transition – he went straight from crawling to running! He loves to play with puzzles and shape sorting toys. He now has a large vocabulary that he uses all day long as he runs around the house telling stories and singing songs, even if some of the words that he says are words that only he understands. He loves to read books whether with our help or by himself. He also loves to put things together and is a great problem solver. His new favorite thing to do is put together seatbelts so we almost always have to unbuckle Becca’s carseat before we can put her in it. He is the sweetest little man who knows no stranger and loves being around other people, especially other children. We feel so incredibly blessed by our two special children and feel even closer as a family because of them.

Dwight is enjoying working for NASA . He is currently helping to retire the Shuttle and feels honored to be a part of the next step in space flight and developing the new program. He began his first semester of grad school at Florida Institute of Technology in August. He is working toward a Masters of Science in Space Systems. His first two classes proved to be challenging, especially since he was getting use to be back in school again. He feels like he learned a lot of valuable information and in the end was able to pull off A’s in both classes. Next semester will be another crazy one with classes in things like Astro-dynamics and other things that go way over my head. Between school and work Dwight keeps pretty busy, but he’s very good at making sure he spends plenty of time with his favorite little boy and girl. I sure married a great guy!

I (Peggy) finally feel like Titusville is becoming home which is mostly thanks to my discovery of the local community theater programs. It’s nice to feel involved and to make friends in the area. I was able to participate in several stage productions including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which I preformed while 5 months pregnant. It was the best exercise I could have asked for during my pregnancy. During the Fall I was invited to sing with several groups and had the opportunity to carol at Disneyworld earning 2 free tickets! I’ve also been able to work with a few clients giving massages. I hope to be able to find a part time job at a spa or health center in a few years when the kids start school so I need to give massages every once in a while to keep my license. I still have a few piano students and hope to continue teaching this next year. All of that makes it sound like I’m really busy, but most of my time this year was spent playing with Jonah and most recently, staring at Rebecca which is really all I want to do these days. I’m so grateful that I’m able to stay at home with my sweet babies.

We are really beginning to love our little community and our ward family. We’re looking forward to another wonderful year here in Central Florida, and we feel very blessed to be able to keep in touch with friends and family who live far away.

We hope that your family is also looking forward to a great 2011 and we hope that it’s not too far in the future before we’re able to get together with you again.

As always, if you’re ever in the area, you always have a place to stay with us!

Much love,

Dwight, Peggy, Jonah and Rebecca Renshaw

peggyrenshaw@yahoo.com

dwightrenshaw@yahoo.com

Every birth is a Miracle...

Someone told me not too long ago that giving birth was one of the most amazing experiences of their life. I hadn't really thought much about it until she said that, but I realized right away that I felt the same way about Jonah's birth and now I can say that I feel that way about Rebecca's birth too.
We decided to induce a week earlier than planned because my measurements had stopped increasing for several weeks and since I was 'softening' and beginning to dilate a little bit, we (Dwight, my doctor and I) felt it was a good idea to get her out of there "just in case". That turned out to be a very good call since there was very little fluid left when they tried to break my water. But we'll get to that part later...
We got to the hospital just a little after 7:30 on November 11th, checked in and did all the fun prep stuff like blood work and iv's (woo...). The nurse mid-wife came in around 8:30 to check me - I was still only at 1 cm! But the baby was very low and I was pretty much effaced all the way. They use a pill that causes contractions to induce instead of pitocin which they only use if needed later in the delivery.
My contractions started right away! It was excited for a little while and then when I got that first painful one, I thought "what did I just do to myself!" But it was too late now!
At one point I actually considered not going with an epidural but that thought left me quickly after Dr.Tiaval came in to check me and break my water, which like I said was kind of hard because her head was so low and there wasn't much fluid left anyway. I was still only at 2-3 cm's which we were all very surprised about. Dr Taival had to do some crazy stuff to get my water broken which really started the contractions going and from that second on I was praying the anesthesiologist would get there before it was too late to get the meds. He showed up around 2-ish with his needle and he couldn't have gotten there any sooner. My contractions were 2 minutes apart and boy did they not feel good. You think you're good at handling pain, but then you get to a certain point and thank heavens for modern medicine!
Unfortunatly, the epidural didn't work all the way. They said sometimes the needle will shift just barely one way or another and create a "window" where you still feel the pain. My window was on my right pelvis and the contraction pains went from being a general pressure to a very sharp prick in that one area. I would have rather not had the epidural than deal with feeling like someone was stabbing a knife in me every few minutes. But they had me lay on my side and let gravity do its work moving the medicine into the window and eventually it all went away. Then it was time to get a little rest.
Dr Taival came in again around 4:30 to check me again. My contractions were huge at this point! I could tell by the pressure that I still felt even through the epi. This is when things got a little interesting.
My doctor is awesome. She doesn't say things to scare you or worry you which is why I'm guessing she didn't say anything before now about why I wasn't progressing much. Apparently a band of scar tissue had developed and was preventing me from dilating. I was still only a 4 at this point and that wasn't expected. We have no idea where this band of scar tissue came from because I had never had any procedures that would usually cause this sort of thing. The only thing we could think of was when I delivered Jonah something happened that either the doctor didn't know about or didn't say anything to us about. Didn't matter at this point anyway. The band was there and it was starting to cause problems. Dr. Taival tried breaking it manually but that wasn't working. She decided to start pitocin to see if that would help. She didn't come out and say it, but all knew what was coming. My water had been broken for several hours and there was very little fluid in there to begin with and it had been that way for who knows how long. I wasn't dilating and there was an obstruction keeping me from being able to. Dr. Taival didn't say the word "c-section" but she did say we'd have a baby before midnight and we knew what that meant.
Lots of people have to get c-sections. I know this and I knew that everything would be ok. But I was not prepared and the reality of it scared me to death, especially because her head was already so far down.
The only thing I could think to do was get a blessing and leave it in God's hands. I called my good friend Julianna who was getting ready to move but who's husband had not yet been released from being the Elder's Quarm President. He and another member of our ward showed up just after 6:00 and gave me an amazing and powerful blessing. I was expecting to be blessed with peace no matter the outcome, but instead I was blessed specifically that my baby was going to born naturally and without any complications. I guess you can look at what happened next in any way that you want to - but when Dr. Taival came in just a few minutes later to check me and the band had softened and I was at 6 cm, I knew that it was a direct result of Heavenly Father blessing me through their Priesthood. What a cool testament of the power He has entrusted to us and of His love.
Very soon after that I began feeling different pressures and I told the nurse. She said it was a good thing happening but it was shift changing time so she didn't check me or anything. Just after 7 I got to meet my new nurse who talked with us for a while and then left to check on the other girl who had just had her baby. She told us that she'd come back and check in a few minutes and probably need to go find the doctor. But right after she left, the doctor came in to check me because my contractions were doing some interesting things. We kind of joked about how one time, Dr Taival checked someone and the baby was right there already coming out on its own.
Well, she checked me and guess what - this baby was already coming out on her own! It was fun to see Dr Taival go from laid back and relaxed to "all business" as she called everyone in and got to work. She told me not to move and since I was so excited the nurse had to try and keep me from laughing because apparently nothing was stopping this baby from delivering herself. It was probably 3 minutes and two tiny pushes from the time Dr. Taival checked me to the time I got to meet my sweet little Rebecca Dawn. She was 7lbs 4 1/2 ozs, 19 inches long and just gorgeous!
This past week has been a beautiful one as I've fallen in love with this special little spirit. It's been an amazing experience, from the time we found out that Rebecca was on her way to the time that she was born. No matter the pain or discomfort, she has been worth it and to be able to be an instrument in God's hands in creating life is an incredible blessing.
Dwight and I have been given two very special children to take care of. I am so glad that Rebecca has made it here safely and I can't wait to see all that life has in store for her and Jonah.

I'll add more pictures on a later blog, but if you want to see some right now, you can go here. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098778&id=1155601621&l=6e8b97657b