Merry Christmas!

Hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours! A few quick highlights:

Audrey cooing at DaddyIsaac and Santa (just a little bit happy, don't you think?) Waiting at the top of the stairs to come down Christmas morning. I think mine were the only kids on earth who didn't wake up until 9am to open presents! But by then, I already had breakfast ready, so they had to eat first. What a mean mom I am!Emmie opening a present, I just love that smile on her face!And Isaac getting excited about his new truck . Imagine that. Since I'm the one usually taking pictures, I don't end up in too many of them, but I found one! Merry Christmas!

Cristmas Crafts

I love getting ready for Christmas and all the planning and decorating (even though I'm not very good at it!). I had planned for a few months to make some new Christmas stockings, since we wouldn't have enough for everyone with the new addition to our little family. Before Audrey was born, I bought the fabric I needed and had a plan in my mind of how I wanted them to look, and some how I was able to squeeze in enough time to get them all done! Granted, it took me until about a week before Christmas, but at least they are finished! Here is how they turned out:
Jarom had fun rearranging the stockings to read: MEDIA, M.IDEA, A.DIME, etc. Who knew our initials would be so versatile?

And as much fun as they are to look at, they were even more fun to look inside Christmas morning!The other quick little sewing project I did was a gift card cozy. I got the idea here and used the left over fabric from my stockings. It turned out so cute, I don't know if I will ever be able to give another gift card without a cozy ever again!

Before & After

The other day, Isaac decided to try his hand at hair styling with scissors and Emilie was his target. And being the distracted mom that I am, I didn't even notice it had happened for a couple hours after it happened! Emilie was quick to point out that Isaac was the one that did it, but when I confronted him, he tried to pass it off onto Emilie at first, but finally confessed. Here is his handiwork:
While it's not the worst hack-job ever, it was short enough in places that I didn't trust myself to fix it. So while Isaac was at school the next day, I took Emilie to Fantastic Sams for a hair cut. Here is her after shot: The bangs are quite a bit shorter over all, but I think they look cute and are blended nicely so they'll grow out just fine. While she was there, I had the girl trim all her hair and she now has a cute little a-line cut.

I'm just glad it wasn't shorter - it could have been so much worse!

2010 Scrapbook pages

In my ideal world, I would scrapbook all the time and all my pages would be beautiful and perfect, but until that time, my yearly pages for the family exchange will have to do! Here is how this year's pages turned out:

Getting along

Any time a new baby is born, the family dynamics change to accommodate the new member. I remember when Isaac came home and how much Gabby (the cat) investigated the new noisy little one. When Emilie was born, I worried how Isaac would handle not being the only child any more, and we had our fair share of tantrums and episodes. I was likewise concerned about how both kids would react to Audrey, especially once we brought her home from the hospital. I worried about Emilie the most, since she's very tender-hearted and emotional about "her" things, but the transition so far has been much better than I anticipated! In fact, the kids seem to crowd around Audrey almost too much! Here they are playing with her on the bed:Isaac holding her on the couch. He always asks to hold her. The other day, he actually took her out of her bassinet and took her to Jarom because she was crying. I'm just glad that I didn't see it happen! He just loves to help take care of his baby sister. Emilie has taken upon herself the role of second mother. She gets upset if she doesn't hold the baby at least once a day. She loves to help replace fallen pacifiers (although her insertion methods could still use some improvement). When Audrey cries, she sometimes sings to her to help soothe her. And of course, what baby forehead is complete without its daily bathing in toddler kisses? I'm so glad she loves her new baby sister!But on the off moment when she doesn't have big brother and sister around to help mother, she always has this trusty friend for comfort:I think all our kids are destined to be thumb suckers. Granted,she hasn't really found her thumb since yesterday, but it's probably just a sign of what's to come.

Audrey had her two week check-up today and did great! She was 8 lbs. 2 oz. at birth, and in the hospital had dropped to 7 lbs. 6 oz. She went to the doctor at 5 days old and was up to 7 lbs. 13 oz. When we went in today, they wanted to see her at least back up to her birth weight, but this little girl has been busy - she weighed in at 8 lbs. 14 oz.! She gained a whole pound this last week! She also grew an inch, wow! I'm so proud of my gorgeous little girl!

New arrival!

Just one short week ago, our sweet little Audrey Marie was born! I had an induction scheduled for this Monday, but I guess she had plans of her own. Tuesday night, I felt contractions getting pretty regular, so around 7pm I started timing them. Unlike other times, after a couple hours they didn't let up, so at 9pm we made some phone calls to get the kiddos watched and Jarom and I headed up to the hospital. On our way up, we joked that any time, the contractions will just end - likely as we pulled up to the hospital! But they kept being steady and shortly after checking into the hospital, we were admitted into labor and delivery and the end of our journey was underway!

We labored throughout the night and into the morning, but progress stalled, so they added pitocin into the mix, and after a few hours of that, no progress was made, so we went ahead with a c-section. At 11:09 am, sweet Audrey was born and was 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 3/4 inches long. I had a feeling that she would have darker hair like Isaac had, and sure enough, she had a full head of beautiful, dark hair. Here is one of the first pics of us in the operating room while they were stitching me up.
Back into the recovery room. After 15 hours of labor and surgery, I was one tired mama! Isaac and Emilie were so excited to meet their new little sister! Isaac had to wear a face mask because he's been coughing a lot, and Emilie has a nice little eczema rash on her mouth, poor girl! Audrey wasn't quite sure what to think of these big siblings loving on her!
A very awake little Audrey with her best friend, the binkie.
On our way home. Isaac is wearing his Big Brother shirt, Emilie has a Big Sister shirt, and Audrey has the Little Sister shirt. This was mostly for my sake, the kids didn't find it nearly as exciting as I did - but isn't that usually the case?

Halloween

It's been a few weeks, I figure I should probably share a few Halloween pictures.

Since most of our Halloween plans happened to land on the day I was discharged from the hospital, I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked and had to miss some things, like Isaac's Kindergarten party and taking the kids trick-or-treating at Novell, but Jarom was super dad and made sure the kids still had a great holiday! Here are the kids (Isaac the ninja, cousin Michaela as Ariel, and Emili the princess) at Novell.
Jarom was especially proud of his Jack Skeleton pumpkin. It took a few candles inside to light up enough at night, but it sure looked cool! The kids and I just used the stick-on face elements and the kids thought that was pretty great, not to mention quick and no clean-up required!Saturday, our ward had a trunk-or-treat. Since it was raining outside, the event was moved inside, which I appreciated so I could just sit on a padded chair and pass out candy. Isaac had a blast making the rounds getting tons of candy, but Emile seemed a bit freaked out by the whole experience and would only go to a few different people.
My friend Cami and I. I've been wanting to dress up as a pregnant nun for years now, I'm so excitd I could finally pull it off!

Complaints

This post is nothing but complaining and whining, so feel free to ignore it. I just have a few things to complain about.

First of all, I am HORRIBLY grateful to be pregnant and have a special little baby girl growing in my womb that will soon be joining our family. I would never complain about being pregnant and all the ups and downs that come with the journey.

But with that being said, I HURT.

And I don't mean the normal aches and pains of being near the end of the pregnancy. I went in last week to get my cerclage removed, and as usual, the doctor first tried to remove it in clinic. I was very skeptical since they weren't able to do it in clinic with Emilie's stitch, but they seemed confident it wouldn't be difficult. That was a fail and just made me cramp and contract the rest of the evening. I went back in the next day so they could do the procedure in the operating room with anesthesia. I was still contracting pretty regularly, even before they started, and they noticed as they were monitoring my contractions that the baby's heartbeat was dropping slightly with the contractions. I had to wait a few hours since there were a few emergency c-sections that I had to wait for, but finally it was my turn and I was taken back. My doctor isn't one to really show frustration too much, but my stitch was really making him upset because it just wasn't coming out easily. Finally, after much longer than anticipated (and some not-so-pleasant reactions to the anesthesia), he finally got the stitch out.

I went back to the recovery room and continued contracting and was worried that labor might be underway. I wasn't ready to have my baby yet, but a part of me was a little excited about the prospect of having everything over and done with. After a few hours though, things started settling down. They were still worried about the baby's heart and made me stay overnight for observation. It was a very long night, that bed was so uncomfortable, but eventually morning came, baby was doing great, and I was able to go home.

That was Thursday and I'm still feeling horrendously sore. I had my weekly appointment yesterday and they checked to see how things were going only to find out that in the process of getting the stitch out, it tore a nice big hole in the side of my cervix. That would explain why I'm still bleeding and feel such sharp pains every time I have contractions. The doctor says that the tear should heal just fine and shouldn't affect any future pregnancies should that be in our future, although it would affect how any future cerclages would be performed. I don't know what affect it will have when I do finally go into labor, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

So until then, I'll just keep getting by in survival mode, horrendously sore and fatigued. Luckily I have resilient kids who don't mind having to watch more tv than usual and put up with a messier house than usual. They don't even mind having to eat pizza and hamburgers more often since mom can't cook as much either. Jarom is doing a great job helping out with the kids so I can rest and take baths - one of the few things that seem to bring much relief.

At least the finish line is in sight. We are now in November, and at some point in this month, I will have my baby girl in my arms and this pregnancy journey will finally come to an end. I can survive just a few more weeks of this, right?

New Job

Jarom is starting his new job at Blue Host today and Isaac was so excited for him. As soon as he got up, he drew this for him, only to find out that Daddy had already left for work, so he's going to have to wait until tonight to show it to him. Daddy is on the left, then there's the building on the right where he works. He drew a line from Daddy to the window where his office will be. Isaac's imagination and apparent authority about everything never ceases to amaze me.

We're all excited and proud of Jarom to start this new job and hope that it is a good fit for him and for them.

Hee Haw Farms

Last year was the first time I had heard about Hee Haw Farms, and we had such a great time then, so I've really been looking forward to going again this year. It's a family-run farm with really fun activities for the kids to do, and it's not too crowded. Some of our favorite things:

The corn pit:The tire-horse swings:
The pony rides, which Emilie actually loved! She's been pretty freaked out when I've tried to let her ride ponies before. The corn maze. They had so much fun running ahead of a very slow, waddling mommy and deciding which directions to take. Amazingly, we didn't get too lost! And my favorite part was Emilie calling the corn stalks "corn trees."And last but not least, our attempt at a group shot on the trick-or-treat hayride. This was Isaac's favorite part. Every so often along the ride, there would be people dressed up in costumes throwing candy into the wagon for the kids to get. What could be better than that?

Piano Recital

For the last year or so I've been teaching piano lessons and it has been such an amazing experience for me to share my love of music with some of the children in my neighborhood. Last weekend I held my first piano recital with my students and they did so well! Most of them had never taken any formal music class before, so to see them start with very little and be able to perform a couple pieces, most of them from memory, was very gratifying! Granted, some of them made a mistake or two, but I still make mistakes all the time and it's part of being a musician and performing to be able to make mistakes and learn to just keep going.Here I am with my adorable group of students. I held the recital at the Piano Gallery in Orem and they have a beautiful, full-sized Yamaha grand that they were able to play on. I think the kids really enjoyed playing on a nice stage with an amazing instrument like that!

Starting in November I'm going to take my maternity leave from teaching and will start back up again in January. I think we will all enjoy a little break from the rigors of piano lessons and enjoy the holiday season.

California Dreaming

The California trip that we were initially going to try to take in the spring that was postponed thanks to morning sickness was finally realized a few weeks ago! My darling friend Chelsea let us stay with her at her parents' amazing home, and we had a great balance of fun stuff, visiting family, and relaxing! Here are some of the highlights:

Disneyland:
Waiting in line at the Nemo sub ride. This was our longest wait time, maybe 15-20 minutes. We went on a good day, the lines moved quickly and we were able to go on most of the rides we wanted.Isaac loved watching Captain E-O and kept trying to grab the 3D images. At the end, he was standing in front of his seat dancing around like MJ, it was pretty darn cute! Emilie on Small World. She was a bit hesitant at first, as is her nature, but it ended up being one of her favorite rides! We even went on it twice!Meeting Minnie Mouse. Isaac was so excited to see her, he gave her a kiss. On the lips. Yeah. And of course, the big guy. I think he kind of scared Emilie a little bit, but Isaac thought it was pretty cool.Then of course, we had fun on other days too, like swimming in the jacuzzi:
Getting chased by the waves:
Dining on the pier at Ruby's:
Very yummy burgers and shakes!
Overlooking the ocean. Some people said they saw dolphins, but I couldn't see any. Lots of surfers and sailboats though! Atlantis Park in Garden Grove, what a darling park! Isaac on the giant sea dragon slide:
Emilie rocking on a sea horse:
Giant sea star:
And this last one is probably my favorite picture from the trip. I had set the timer on my camera so we could get a picture of all of us together. We tried a few times to get everyone looking forward at the same time but with humorous results. Then I viewed this image and thought it looked pretty good, so we left that little play pod and went on to play elsewhere. Later that day, I looked at the picture more closely and realized that what I thought was a great family picture is really just funny!Isaac has scary arms - I guess he kept trying to put his hands up and Jarom kept pushing them back down, so of course Jarom looks frustrated Emilie is covering her mouth. I'm smiling though! So even though it's not the perfect picture I thought I took, I still love it.

I'm kicking myself for not taking pictures of the kids with Grandma and the other family members we visited, especially Brett who just returned from his mission to South Africa! Oh well, just more reason to go down again for another visit. Just not when I'm 29 weeks pregnant next time.