Family Pictures, June 2011

We went to FotoFly in Draper and had family pictures done today. I also wanted to get some of the kids together since Syd is 19 months now and Ethan just turned six. I can't believe my little man is growing up so quickly. Anyway, enjoy.

Poor Kid...

Well, we finally figured out what's wrong with Sydney. She has raging ear infections in both ears. I got a little worried on Saturday when her fever wasn't coming down so I took her in to the doctor. They took her temperature and even with ibprofen in her system it was 104.3°.  Crazy!  No wonder she was acting so weird.

We got some antibiotics and have started the course of those. They seem to be helping. Her fever hasn't completely broken yet, but I'm hopeful it will soon.  She has still been pretty warm today, but at least she's walking and playing a tiny bit and she has started to want to eat again.

Poor kid. I hope she feels better soon.

Wow! It's Been A While

I'm sitting here in one of my few quiet moments and realized it has been quite a while since I've blogged. Ethan and Dan are outside working on the yard. Sydney is asleep, or at least attempting to sleep. I'm working and thought I'd take a quick break to update on what's going on with us.

Ethan will be six this month! I can't believe my baby boy is going to be that old! He is just about to graduate Kindergarten. In fact, they're having their program tomorrow for his class. I'll post some pictures later. He is doing really well and loves to read. He reads EVERYTHING now...signs, computer screens, books, logos...everything...all the time. Luckily, spelling aloud when we don't want him to understand still works...for now. I'm glad he has a love of reading. It seems like such a short time ago he was a toddler running around like Sydney is now. She's 18 months now and a little spitfire. She is so girly! She loves anything that sparkles, shoes, and anything cuddly. She has started talking and loves the words no and Daddy.

As for other news, we're getting ready for my niece, Kylea, to get married in about a month. Should make for a fun time. She called Dan today and asked him to do her cake. He does a really good job and I'll post pictures once we get to that point. He has done several for various family members over the years. He even did our cake.

Dan has been working a lot lately, but that's so we can play later this summer. Our annual trip to Bear Lake is coming up. I'm excited to get away. The 4th should be really fun too. I always have a good time and any day you get to have homemade ice cream isn't such a shabby one.

Sydney Is One!

Sydney turned one this last week. It was so amazing to me that my little baby is growing up so fast! We had a little gathering of just a few family members and had some ice cream and cake. Dan made a really cute cake for the occasion and Sydney had a lot of fun! Ethan got to play with his cousins and it was a great time for all.

This is my baby at the hospital...

We had such a fun time...look at the cutie now!

Ethan & Sydney New Pictures

A couple of weeks ago the kids and I went up to Logan to get pictures done by my awesome niece Kylea. She did such a good job. Afterwards, Kylea and Mariah used some editing skills to make sure they looked just right. I LOVE these pictures. You can never get these moments back and now I have them forever. Thanks girls!

I'll Be Posting A Real Blog Soon But...

To tide you over...

Stuff

I haven't just blogged lately, so I thought I would do a quick post. Dan is at work and both kids are asleep so it's one of the rare times that I actually have a completely quiet house. In fact, the only thing I can hear currently is the sound of the keyboard as I type.

Today was kind of a rough day for me. I'm not sure if it's the postpartum hitting or the fact that I haven't really seen the sun out today, but it was just one of those days where everything is annoying, you feel like you want to cry, and you just want to get in bed and hide to get away from it all until tomorrow...if the sun happens to peek through the clouds. I knew I had to do something about it, especially since Dan was working tonight. I knew I had to change my attitude somehow. I decided when Dan got up from sleeping (he worked last night too) that I would go beat the crap out of myself at the gym. I did and it worked. I feel so much better! I love the endorphin high that I get after working out, and boy did I really work out this time, weights, cardio, the whole deal. I'm going to be feeling it tomorrow, but it's a good pain.

As far as what is going on with us, things are pretty normal around here. We blessed Sydney in sacarament meeting on the 7th and it was really nice. Some family and a couple of friends were able to come. Both of my brothers were able to stand in the circle, along with the grandpas, Dan's brother Ben, and our friend Moby. Sydney is growing so much and changing so much every day. She really is a happy baby. Give her food, make sure she's not messy, and cuddle with her every now and then and she's happy. It's so fun to have my little girl. She is so different from Ethan. She loves to cuddle and Ethan hated it. He was always afraid he was missing something going on around him. He would always push away when I would try to cuddle him so he could see what was going on. Sydney, on the other hand, is content just to be with Mommy. I love it.

Ethan is doing so well in school. I'm SO proud of him. He has wonderful teachers in his preschool class that are working with him on some of his issues with the social aspects of school. I love them and am so grateful for them. He comes home with so many art projects that our refrigerator is always sporting something new. I really love it. He can write his name and is learning to use scissors. He is getting pretty good at that. He loves to sing all the songs and is so funny with the things he says sometimes. The other day, they sang "The Wheels On The Bus" at school and he sang it all the way home. When he got to the verse about the Mommys on the bus going, "Shh, shh, shh." he said, while pointing to me, "The yous on the bus go shh, shh, shh." It was cute and it made me laugh so much. He has many friends and is relating well to the classroom time. I'm just so proud of how much he has accomplished in such a short time being in that school.

Dan is working a lot, but that's a good thing. He recently started working part time on one or two days a week with a temporary agency. His overtime was cut due to overstaffing at his regular job, so this fills in the gap for us. It's flexible and the money is good, so we're happy with it. He is also gaining a lot of experience in things he doesn't normally do, so it's been really nice. I love Dan and I'm so grateful he works so hard for our family.

As far as anything else goes, we did our taxes and we're getting something back, so that's a good thing. I've been working as much as I can, but it has been slow, so the extra money to do something a little fun will be nice. I'm fully recovered from my gall bladder surgery. I'm glad it's out, but I'm sick of being the expensive one in the family. Hopefully my expensive medical stuff is done for the year. I think I was having attacks during my pregnancy but didn't know what it was. Finally, after one trip to the Instacare and another trip to the ER in January, we figured it out and I saw the surgeon. Surgery was good. It went well and I'm happy to be able to eat again.

February is shaping up to be pretty busy for us. We had Sydney's blessing the first week, we had my nephew Logan's missionary farewell this past Sunday, and we have my other nephew Andrew's homecoming this coming Sunday. Hopefully the ward doesn't think we're inactive. We're not, we just have a huge family. I'm grateful we get to have this fun time with our family though.

We've been busy, but hopefully that won't keep me too far from the blogging world. I need to do it more often than I have been.

Kids Pictures

Last week I took the kids in to have pictures done. Sydney was two months old and I wanted to get some pictures of her, Ethan, and both of them together. :) They turned out really cute! Enjoy!

So Cute!

Don't you just want to love on her forever?!

Am I Awake?

As many of you know, having a newborn in the house is a big job...I mean it's a HUGE undertaking at times. Sometimes you're lucky if hair gets brushed that day. The days often fly by as a blur and you're left wondering if it's daytime or nighttime. Now that Sydney is almost two months old, she's starting to be a little bit more normal as far as routine is concerned. I have a minute, so I thought I would do a quick post.



First of all, my birth story. I was due on November 15th, but I was feeling so miserable that second to last week, my doctor and I scheduled an induction for November 12th if I hadn't gone into labor by then. Well, November 10th rolled around and Dan had to work overnight until 4:00 a.m. I didn't think I would be going into labor anytime soon, so he went to work as usual. In the early morning hours I started having really strong contractions that weren't stopping. I finally broke down and called Dan home from work at 2:00 a.m. what was now November 11. Annoyingly, by the time he got home, about a half an hour later, the contractions had stopped so I thought it was just a false alarm. It turns out it wasn't.



I went back to sleep and woke up at about 9:00 a.m. with hard contractions. This time, I knew it was for real. We called my mom at work, so she could come home to watch Ethan, while we went up to the hospital. The ride in the car to drop off Ethan and then the ride up to the hospital was the longest car ride ever! Finally, we made it up to LDS Hospital and got up to the Labor and Delivery ward. They got me into a room and had to ask me questions while I had to stop every couple of minutes to breathe through contractions. By this time, they were about every two to three minutes apart. They asked if my water had broken and I told them I wasn't sure. Apparently, it doesn't always "break" sometimes it is just "leaking." Anyway, it turned out that my water had broken. That meant not being sent home for a false alarm. You know, even though I knew I was in labor, that's always the fear, that they'll just send you home thinking you're the crazy pregnant woman who doesn't know what she's talking about. After we were sure that I was in labor and not crazy, the blessed anesthesiologist came in with my epidural. I had already endured about five hours of labor at this point, so relief was wonderful.



Anyway, the labor went on for quite a while. I progressed quickly at first and we thought I would probably have the baby before 7:00 p.m., but the hours kept ticking by and I was stalled out at 8 cm. They did some checking as to why and it turns out Sydney was "sunny side up" meaning she was head down, but facing toward the ceiling not the floor. They tried various things to get her to turn over, turning me on each side, doing an amnio infusion to give her more room to turn, etc. but nothing was working. Babies in this position often make for labor longer and harder for it to progress. I really wanted to be done by this point. I hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours and I was tired, let alone just being in labor is hard work, even with the epidural. While Dan and I were alone in the room for a few minutes, I asked him to give me a blessing. It wasn't long after that, I was ready to push, but first the doctor had to turn her. He was able to turn her face down and she was out within four minutes of me starting to push. That was a big change from the 45 minutes of pushing I had with Ethan. Sydney was born November 11, 2009 at 11:32 p.m. She was 8 lbs. 6 oz. and was 20 in. long.



After Sydney was out, they had to work on her a little to help her breathe. She had swallowed some meconium. She hadn't swallowed much, but it was still giving her troubles keeping her oxygen saturation up. They worked on her for about 25 minutes and then she was fine. Everything in the delivery room was okay and we stayed in the delivery room for a while.



Afterward, in my post partum room I had some minor complications, but the nurses were able to work on me and I was fine. Because of me being out of commission though and not being able to feed Sydney that first night, she had some blood sugar issues and had to be put on an IV. She also went to the NICU for a couple of days. She was okay, but it was hard not to have her with me the whole time I was in the hospital. The two days I was there as a patient I had to go to the NICU to see her.



Our time in the hospital was also marked by a fire. Some construction was going on between the 8th and 9th floors on the other end of the hospital and a fire was sparked inside the wall. Some of the sparks got into the ventillation system so a good portion of the hospital smelled like smoke. They had to move the NICU babies over to a part of the regular nursery because of the smell. That turned out to be a good thing because she was a lot closer.



Finally, it was time for me to go home, but Sydney couldn't come with me. My pediatrician arranged for a "hotel stay" for me so I could feed her during the night. Dan came home and stayed with Ethan while I stayed with Sydney in the hospital. It was a rough night to be away from Dan after having just given birth, but I was glad to be with Sydney. We got her discharged the next morning. Dan and Ethan got to come and get us from the hospital. It was the first time Ethan got to meet his sister because of all of the H1N1 flu restrictions on visitors. Nobody under 14 unless they were ill was to be in the hospital. They were only making exceptions in some end of life situations. Ethan was so excited to meet his sister and to have me back home. He is such a good big brother. He is so protective of his sister.



So now, here we are about eight weeks along and things seem to be going fine. There were some bumps in the road with breastfeeding because of my PCOS, but with the help of a medication and some supplementation, things seem to be improving. Now that things are further along, It shouldn't be a month between blog posts.



Until next time...

Sydney's First Photo Shoot

My cousin, Jenn, took some pictures of Sydney so I could do my birth announcements and have some cute pictures for my wall of her at this young age. Aren't they cute?

Smiley Girl

Slight Hiatus

You may have noticed a slight hiatus on me keeping up on the blog in recent weeks. If you've been following me at all, this is due to a new addition to our family! We just love her! Her name is Sydney Rae. Here are some fun pictures and I'll write more soon, but I thought I'd better get these posted. :)

Fw: Happy Thanksgiving

Enjoy your turkey coma. :)

The Thinker