Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Notable Quotables and Curious Questions

Garrett: Referring to his dad "He just keeps getting weirder!"

Rylee: After seeing Santa at Macey's, "that is NOT the real Santa Claus he is JUST a human dressed up like Santa."

G: "Daddy, you have exposed your brilliance."

R: "Does Santa have a penis?" Luckily my mom got to field that one. "Of course"

G: "My brain has hatched an idea!"

R: After seeing Austin for the first time and he had on his beanie hat "Was he born with that hat on?"

G: "You are the most beautiful mother I ever had." Yes, that 8 1/2 month pregnant mother cried!

R: "You are the worst mom" Yes, that 9 month pregnant mother also cried.

The December Blur

It just went by to fast. There wasn't enough time...or more accurately, I didn't have enough energy to really "do" Christmas this year. But we managed just the same.

Fruit Salad has nothing to do with Christmas but I thought it was so cute when Garrett came home from Kindergarten with his take home book entitled "Fruit Salad" with instructions on how to make one. He was thrilled when I suggested we make one for lunch. He and Rylee helped pick out and cut up all the fruit and they even ate it!

These two are just too cute.

Rylee and her best buddy Hannah.

They just make me laugh!

On the 6th I took the kids and my mom for lunch at Spaghetti Factory and to see Santa at the mall. Garrett hopped right on his lap and told him a few things that he wanted and Rylee wouldn't even take the free sucker from him. Maybe next year!

On the 10th my parents took us (me, Jon, Alisa and Brian) to dinner and then to the temple to do sealings for family work that had been worked on throughout the year. This has become a tradition around Christmas and I love it. Taking a step back from all the commercial parts of Christmas and do something extra special. This year was still great the only difference was after one hour my fingers had swollen to sausages and I had to squeeze me feet back into my shoes long enough to walk out of the temple.

On the 11th Shellie and I took the kids to see Utah Regional Ballet's The Nutcracker. This was Rylee's first year to attend and she couldn't wait.

She sat on the edge of her seat (or my lap) the whole time and enjoyed watching all the beautiful ballerinas.

My very own Rudolph's came flying through the house.



On the 17th was the Christmas Sing and school. Garrett promised he'd sing loud for us. Singing at all was exciting for me!

Isn't he cute! He just grinned ear to ear when he saw me, Rylee and his grandmas in the audience.

That same night Shellie had the kids over for her Polar Express sleepover. When I picked Rylee up the next morning I thought something looked different but we were in a hurry and it wasn't until we got home that I realized she had these new sweepy bangs. She was insistent that "Nana said my hair was too long so she cut it." It wasn't until after a bath and I could really see we had a slight mullet going on since not only were there bangs but the sides had been cut too. I questioned her again and she only said "don't tell Nana". A few minutes later Shellie calls and says she just got back home and found a ball of hair in her hallway and was anyone at our house missing it!

The little stinker with her new do (after a professional fix). Luckily it wasn't a drastic cut and we had something to still work with.

My cuties ready for church!


On the 21st we of course welcomed our sweet Austin James

and were able to bring him home on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day!
Garrett and Rylee were so patient while I finished feeding Austin and changing his diapers before we opened presents. This was one of the redeeming parts of the day...seeing these happy faces.


The much anticipated and constantly asked for pillow pets. They didn't disappoint!






The aftermath...where did the presents go?

This was the other redeeming part.

Garrett made Jon and I a present in school (a snow globe) and this was my favorite gift of the day- the card.


"I hope you like this card"
He was so proud!

Rylee ready for church in her new dress from Grandma Sue and Papa!


Holy cow! I have three kids!


The rest of the month was spent holding, loving and snuggling our "Christmas Baby" as Garrett nicknamed him.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Austin's Arrival

Disclaimer: This post is not for sympathy but rather for me 1) to be reminded in the future of what it was really like 2) to impose a little guilt, if necessary, when Austin grows up 3) for Alli who, I'm afraid, thinks that I've been sugar coating motherhood.

I'm a bit of a superstitious person and should have known things weren't going to transpire as I had envisioned with this delivery when I went to bed the night of the 20th and couldn't get a single ounce of sleep. I laid awake all night tossing from one aching hip to the other. I finally got up around 2:30 and looked out the window to see mounds of snow. Beautiful, yes, but would also make driving to the hospital a bit treacherous. At 4:00am I showered and got the rest of my things ready and off we went to the hospital...it only took 25 minutes (instead of the usual 10). I checked in and look how happy I am - and ready to POP!

(I know, can you believe I'm actually posting this picture! It's for posterity)

Next came the IV. On my left arm the nurse blew the vein once it was already in. On the right arm she hit a valve which wouldn't allow any flow. She gave up and had another nurse try my left hand. Finally, a working IV. As 7:00 was approaching, which was my scheduled c-section time, there was no doctor. Dr. Broberg, who delivered Rylee so beautifully, was nowhere to be found. They paged him twice and never received a response. This isn't looking good. The doctor who was to assist was there and grabbed another doctor to go ahead with the delivery. SPINAL BLOCK. To be honest this is the part of having a baby I fear the most. All went well...at first. While they start cutting I get what can only be described as an electrocution up my spine and into my head that completely freaks me out and is incredibly painful. Both doctors and the anesthetist acknowledge they've "never seen that before". That pain finally goes away. During the rest of the c-section my blood pressure dropped four times down into the 70's which was remidied by a quick shot of epinephrine. This made my pressure jump up and with that I felt like my heart and lungs would explode from my chest. Afterwords the anesthetist tells me that when it drops that low that's usually when people start to vomit and go out so luckily I escaped that outcome.
Here Jon is introducing me to my newborn son Austin!

Isn't he sweet! He was born at 7:56 am, weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long.

Me and my baby once I finally got to hold him!



Daddy and his boy!



Just bonding.

I love this precious little face!

Garrett and Rylee were thrilled to come meet their new brother...

and ride on mom's bed.
Garrett and Austin

Rylee and Austin

Enjoying a cartoon.

Jon was able to take the week off and it was so nice to have him at the hospital with me for most of the time. I was very blessed to have so much help from our families and the kids were taken care of so that I could just recuperate at the hospital and enjoy those first few days without worrying about anything.
Christmas Eve we're heading home! But first the nurse needs to remove my staples. I had staples with Rylee and "knew" what to expect. The nurse takes one look at the incision and says out loud "WOW, he sure used a lot of staples! And it looks like many of them are bent." So 28-30 staples later (I lost count with the ones that the skin had started to grow back on) I was ready to leave.

Garrett and Rylee were anxiously awaiting our arrival.
Christmas Eve night I went to my parents for dinner with Garrett and Rylee and made it for about 1 hour. Christmas day was fun watching the kids open presents and all their excitement. By afternoon however, the tears came and I went to bed that night with eyes nearly swollen shut from crying. Everyone says "oh how fun to have a baby for Christmas" and I suppose it could be but just that statement made it worse. I felt like crap and would have skipped over the whole day if it weren't for my kids. Guilt, physical pain, hormones out of control and disappointment over my already very low expectations of what I would be able to do was just a recipe for disaster.
So my recovery has been nothing like my previous two c-sections. I was in quite a bit of pain and the drugs weren't helping all that much. To add to the fun I got the awesome hacking cough that everyone seems to have. Coughing and c-sections are like water and oil. They're never meant to be together. That being said...is it worth it????

You betcha!
(Here's the sugar coating Alli)
I have been given a beautiful, healthy and happy baby. What more could I ask for?
And I just have to say - I don't know what I would have done without all the kid watching, laundry doing, meals brought in, housecleaning, grocery pickups, and other acts of service given to us by our family and friends! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!
Closing notes: 10 days post surgery I finally started to feel like I was on the mend. Hallelujah!