January in Review

I can't believe that January has already come and gone! I had to go through my pictures and my calendar to see where the month went! Mostly it was comprised of getting back into a normal routine after the holidays.

I have decided that this year I really want to focus on simplifying our lives as much as possible. To that end I spent a lot of time in January cleaning out our garage, closets and cabinets in an effort to get rid of stuff we don't need. I'm one who cleans up and cleans out frequently, and I'm still always amazed at how much stuff I found that we don't really need. It has gotten me to start really questioning my purchases as well because I realize all those things had to come from somewhere!

One event worth noting is that Ryan officially started Primary in January. I was called as a primary worked at the end of December so it's fun to be in there together (I don't actually teach his class, but we are both in junior primary and I sit behind him during Sharing time).

I guess that's it! This month I'll work on getting my camera out a little more often and doing some things that are a little more exciting!

2010 in Review

I'm not one for doing Christmas letters, but I have been thinking a lot about the past year--it was a good one! We took some fun family trips, got Ryan potty trained (YAY!), Annie outgrew her milk and egg allergies and clawed her way back onto the growth chart and into the normal range, Ryan started preschool and Bryan had an extremely successful year business-wise, even with the economy on the skids.

As for me, I started doing two things I never though I could--running and quilting. As much as I have tried, I cannot love running, but I can now run 5 miles without any problem. For me that is HUGE. Running has always been my personal holy grail, and mentally it's been a really good thing.

Quilting kind of came out of nowhere. In February I decided to make a little patchwork blanket for a cousin who was having a baby. I got the top done then had no idea how to finish it. My friend Rachel (a.k.a. quilter extraordinaire) helped me get it tied and bound and gave me a few words of encouragement--"you can totally do this." I believed her, went out and bought a book of quilt patterns for beginners, and therein began something beautiful. I have never before had a real hobby, but I really, really love quilting. For a former career woman who sometimes feels like my daily accomplishments are less than significant, being able to make something beautiful is very affirming.

Here are a few of the fun things I've made this year:

February (this is for you, Ana!)

I don't know where this year is going! It's almost April and it's been nearly three months since I've posted on here! Where does the time go?

Anyway, I thought I'd do a little catching up.

February was a great month. We went to California to visit my parents for my Mom's birthday and had a wonderful time. (Somehow I did not get any pictures that trip, except one of Annie eating an Oreo. Not sure how that happened).

For Valentine's Day, I thought it'd be fun to do a little project so Ryan's friend Noelle came over and they decorated cookies. It was messy and fun and they created some cute little masterpieces.

We were also able to get in one trip to the zoo with our friends the Albertsen's. Ryan absolutely loves all the animals, and it's a great activity this time of year.

On the last weekend of the month, Bryan and I did a 5K to benefit the zoo. Yes, you read that right, Bryan and I, doing a 5K. We had a great time, and the kids enjoyed it too. Since it was early and so cool out, we were able to see the cheetas for the first time, which was pretty cool.

New Year, New Me

If you know me at all, you know I love being a Mom. However, my love of motherhood does not preclude my frustration with the lack of structure that happens when you have two kids two and under. I have always done well with a system--schedules and deadlines and lists. So since I've become a stay-at-home mom, I've struggled, to say the least. I am often "busy" all day, yet somehow at the end of the day I feel like the house is a wreck, I haven't gotten any real exercise or spent any quality time with my kids. It doesn't seem like I should have these problems without a job to worry about, but yet, here I am.

So this year I decided to at least attempt to do something about it. I came up with a general schedule for each day that allows time for me to go to the gym (which, by the way, the kids love), time to just play with the kids, and time for housework. I also came up with a list of things I want to accomplish in terms of housework every day. This way, once those things are done, I don't have to feel guilty about sitting down and reading the kids a book, or heaven forbid, reading a book myself. I have come to accept the fact that I will probably not ever have my entire house completely spotless at the same time (at least until my kids are in school or I get a housekeeper again, the latter of which is not likely), and I am OK with that.

This chapter of my life, with little ones home, is already going by far too quickly for me. I don't want to look back later and feel like I didn't fully take advantage of the blessing it is to be able to spend every day with my kids. So we'll see how this new system works. Wish me luck!

Annie Update

First of all, Annie is doing great.

On the 14th, she went in for an endoscopy and a sigmoidoscopy. From our very first appointment with the GI doctor, I had been very pro-endoscopy, so we were very glad to finally be getting something done.

A week and a half before the procedures, I stopped nursing because I felt like I needed to know how much Annie was actually eating. It was a little scary to discover that she was only eating 14 ounces of formula a day, but at least I had a baseline so I could see if and when we started making any progress.

Anyway, on the day of the procedure, Annie ate 20 ounces of formula. Initially I thought it was a fluke, because the day before she could only eat juice and jello and I figured she was starving. However over the next few days see continued to eat 20 ounces a day, and after a few days, worked her way up to 32 ounces a day, which is where she should be.

The biopsy results showed that she has acid reflux and she is on medication to help heal her esophogus. We haven't been back to see the GI doctor yet, but Annie's pediatrician thinks that she may have had some kind of blockage that got cleared out with the endoscopy.

Regardless of what happened, she is definitely on the mend. Yesterday I took her to get weighed and in 7 days she gained 8 ounces!

She has always been a happy, active baby but I have been amazed at the increase of energy she's had in the last week or so. Thanks to all of our friends and family for their concern and prayers for our little Annie bear.

Where We've Been

So I realize I haven't posted in a couple of months, but it's been crazy. After San Diego we had a couple of average weeks, then Bryan got sick. If you don't know Bryan, he rarely gets sick, and even when he's sick, he never misses work. Well, on more than one occasion he went in late and came home early. On his third doctor's visit within two weeks, he got tested for everything from swine flu to Valley Fever. Luckily, all of the tests came back negative. Everything pointed toward a virus, and after about 6 weeks, he got back to feeling like normal.

In the midst of that, Annie went from falling further down the growth chart at every well visit to loosing weight. Her doctor sent us back to the GI doctor, and we are currently trying to figure out what is going on. We are both currently off of all milk, dairy, egg and soy products because they think she may have an allergic condition in her esophogus and those are the most common allergens. Two weeks after her initial GI visit she has only gained 1 ounce, and we are eagerly awaiting her next visit to see what they are going to do. It's very unsettling, and I worry about it way more than I should, but we're going through the process and doing a lot of praying in the mean time.

Last week we did get to go on our annual vacation, a week in Newport Beach which was wonderful as usual. Pictures to come shortly :)

Under Construction

So I've had a few people ask for pictures of the construction. I didn't think to take before pictures, but it was just a single car garage bay with a normal old garage door before.

Today we have the house painters here, and the wallboard for the interior is supposed to go up by this weekend. Last night we went and looked at carpet and paint colors, and we're pretty close on those things. The other big thing we're waiting on is our bid for the new A/C units and the accompanying work. Overall I'm really pleased with the progress and am very much looking forward to the extra space!

Looking at the new room from the front of the house.

Looking from the laundry room toward the window.

Looking from the window toward the laundry room (the laundry room door will be coming off, and there is a new entryway built that you can't see through the insulation. That's where the door to the garage will go.).

Update

Ryan loves his baby sister!

Apparently it's cool to wear sunglasses in the bathtub!

You can definitely tell they're related!

Trying out squash for the first time


I just realized that it's been a while since I've blogged, so I thought I'd post some new pics and let you know what we're up to. Annie turned 6 months last week, which I still can't believe. She is sleeping awesome and continues to be our little angel baby. She is so good natured and mellow, and such a calming presence in our home. I took her in for her shots on Thursday and even though she is continuing to grow, she is now only in the 5th percentile for her weight! We just tried out solid food for the first time yesterday, and she is pretty unsure about that at this point.

Ryan is doing great. While Annie is allowing us to have nice quiet nights, Ryan definitely is not. Hopefully it's just a stage, but he is up every single night, at least once and often more. It's tiring, but chalk it up to parenthood, right? He is talking like crazy and coming up with new words every day. It's so fun to watch, and he is quite entertaining.

We recently began converting part of our garage into another room. No, we're not having another baby, but we need more room! We have it framed out and the window has been installed and the stucco done on the outside. It will be nice to have some storage and a place to put my sewing maching and scrapbooking stuff so I don't have to pack it up everytime I use it. We're hoping to have it completely done in about a month or so.

That's about all that's new here. It's been crazy hot, and keeping Ryan entertained indoors is proving to be quite a challenge. It should be an interesting summer!

Not an Ideal Destination for the Holiday Weekend

While it's actually a pretty cool looking building, this photo is of Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, where I got to spend Saturday night and most of Sunday.

On Thursday Bryan and Ryan both came down with a pretty nasty bought of the stomach flu. On Friday night I figured I'd gotten lucky and it has passed me over. However Saturday morning I woke up early--and sick. Initially I thought it was just one of my twice-weekly or so episodes of morning sickness, but by 3:00 that afternoon when I was still vomiting Bryan decided I should probably go to Urgent Care and get some fluids and a shot. I went in and after 5 (yes FIVE) unsuccessful attempts to get a line in for an IV, the guy gave me a shot of phenergan to stop the vomiting and told me to go home and hydrate myself with oral fluids. That sounded fine to me--I've had a couple shots of phenergan during this pregnancy and it had always worked.

Anyway, about 2 hours after I got home I woke up from a nap and was sick again. I called my OB and she told me to go to the OB triage at the hospital so they could get me taken care of. They gave me a liter of fluids with Zofran (another medication that is supposed to stop nausea/vomiting) and I was feeling a lot better...until I sat up. As soon as I did that, I was sick once again, so my doctor decided I should stay overnight.

In actuality, it wasn't all that bad. The hospital is really nice, it's about 3 miles from my house, they have amazing nurses, and all of the OB rooms are private. I got lots of rest and had the comfort of them regularly monitoring the baby, who tolerated everything amazingly well.

I'm still really, really tired, but much better than I was. I'm so glad that I have such a great husband who is completely involved in every aspect of Ryan's life so when I had to be gone for a day, I didn't have to worry about them one little bit.

Can I just tell you that I am so counting down the days until the end of this pregnancy?

Pregnancy Update

So I've had a couple of people ask how the pregnancy is going. Let me start by saying that everything with the baby has been fine. It has a nice strong heart rate and I've actually felt it move a couple of times. And that's what matters.

Unfortunately though, the pregnancy has been less than stellar. And by that I mean it sucks. I know, you're not supposed to say that, right? But it's true. Now do I think it's worth it? Of course I do. But it's been rough.

Tomorrow I will be 17 weeks and the whole morning sickness thing is just not going away. In fact, the last couple of weeks have been the worst. This last Thursday I actually had to go to Urgent Care to get IV fluids and a shot to help with the vomiting. The IV was kind of a nightmare because I was so dehydrated that it took them 4 tries to actually get the IV line in.

I totally realize that it could be worse--I have a friend who was on at home IV's through her 7th month with both of her kids. So I'm grateful that it's not that bad, and I am lucky because I do have good days peppered in.

I know that the second I get to hold this precious little baby in my arms, all of this will seem completely inconsequential. However, it is a long time until November :-)

I thought I'd share some new photos of Baby Ryan, since he is changing so much every single day.

We are all doing well, just tired. Ryan is a sleeper, but he lost more than 10% of his initial body weight so we've been on a feeding schedule of every 2 hours since last Thursday. Needless to say, it's a bit taxing, but well worth it.

We are loving parenthood and the joy that comes with being a family. Bryan has completely taken to the role of Daddy and I couldn't ask for a better partner in figuring out this fun new adventure...

The Beginning of a New Chapter

The awesome divas from my department at United Way. This was our last official lunch together last week. I already miss them!

Since I was 15, I have never gone more than three weeks without a job. The three week stint was between leaving my job in California and starting my first job in Arizona after Bryan's and my wedding. So it was really weird to wake up this morning and not have to get up and get ready for work.

I do have to say it's interesting the way things work out. My job for the last couple of years has been one that I often strugged with because it didn't challenge me and provide me with many of the opportunities I had hoped for. But as I look back, it was the perfect job at the time. There weren't a lot of days that required me to come in early or stay late. That equated to more time with Bryan, which I think is so important, especially at the beginning of a marriage. It very rarely stressed me out. And I absolutely loved my boss and the people I worked with in my department, which I think is really rare.

For the most part I really enjoyed my days, and when it came time to leave to stay home and get ready for Ryan, it just seemed like the next logical step. I think if this job would have been like my job at United Way in California I would have been torn and devastated at the proposition of leaving. But it just shows that everything happens for a reason. I feel like the last two years have left me with some fun memories and some good friends, and really, what more could I ask for?

Pregnancy + Kidney Stones = A Bad Combination (or "Why I am no longer afraid of labor")

What a weekend. First off, I had a house full of my friends from California here over the weekend for my baby shower which was awesome (more on that later).

Monday morning I left the house to drop Christine off at the airport on my way to work. Right after we left I started getting intermittent pains in my back. After a few minutes they were every time I took a deep breath. I knew I wasn't in labor but I knew something was wrong so I called and left a message at my doctor's office. By the time we got to the airport the back pain was constant, and even though I felt like I had to go to the bathroom worse than I ever had in my whole life (a common feeling when you're pregnant) trying to do so was ineffective (sorry if that's TMI). Anyway, I figured I'd go ahead and stop by my office and let them know I wasn't feeling great and that I was going to go to the doctor and see what was going on. A couple miles from my office I was in excruciating pain and turned around to go back toward home.

Bryan met me at my doctor's office, but they were completely unhelpful and sent us off to the hospital. Without going into all of the details, I ended up passing a stone, and I have three other ones just hanging out in my kidney. We're hoping they won't do anything until after Ryan comes so we can just deal with them at that point. I ended up spending two days in the hospital, but I got tons of rest and since it was the same hospital where I'm having Ryan, it made me realize we definitely made the right choice. The nurses were absolutely wonderful, and because I was on the maternity floor, they were able to monitor Ryan throughout and make sure all was well with him, which was a huge comfort.

Pretty much everyone I've talked to has said that passing a kidney stone is much worse than giving birth to a child. It was definitely the most horrible pain I have ever experienced, and I can honestly say that I'm no longer afraid to have Ryan. I guess that's my little silver lining....

Updates

Bryan with a sample of the flooring we got for the nursery. And yes, we were VERY excited about this gift!


Baby's first toy...from Grandma and Grandpa Colby.
(Baby also got the cutest little outfit ever from my parents, but I can't get the picture to post right. Boo.)




So when it rains it pours. But rather than bore you with all the details, I'll just give you a quick update:

Christmas: We were able to get away to California for a few days before Christmas to see my parents and Lance. It was nice to visit and made me grateful for winter weather in Arizona! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Bryan's family, which was a great time as usual. We were especially excited to get hardwood flooring for the nursery as one of our gifts.

New Years: As is the usual for us, New Years was not a big deal. Mostly I just enjoyed my final day off before I had to head back to work.

The Baby: I haven't gained an ounce of weight in the past four weeks, but I am definitely showing! My next appointment is tomorrow, then the appointment after that (in four more weeks) should tell us if we're having a boy or a girl. Mother's intuition (and everyone around me) says its a girl. We'll see!

Anyway, the morning sickness and constant fatigue are starting to fade so I'm really excited about that. It's been really hard not having the energy I need just to do many of the day-to-day things that you take for granted. But I'm starting to get back to my old self. And I'm finally able to eat more than cold cereal, McDonald's cheeseburgers and mac & cheese!

We're in the process of doing some pretty involved home improvements to get ready for the baby. We're turning our office into the nursery, and the nook in our current family room into the office. That mostly consists of the installation of major amounts of cabnetry that is scheduled in four weeks. We're then moving the TV into the living room and turning the guest room into the sort of "miscellaneous room" for all of my scrapbooking stuff, At Home America, etc. It's lots of work, but I'm excited to see the final result. Once we start doing more than the initial cleaning up and cleaning out, I'll post pictures...

Where I've Been

Sorry I've been MIA for a while. It has been crazy, to say the least.

The majority of the insanity has been great...on our Anniversary, Bryan and I found out that we are expecting! We wanted to wait for our first appointment to make sure everything was OK before we made a big announcement. So on Dec. 11 we had the first ultrasound and got to see and hear the little one's heart beat. It was amazing.

While we couldn't be happier, it has been a bit of a challenge as well. Being sick every day (why do they call it morning sickness when it lasts all day??), wanting to do nothing but sleep and only being able to eat a total of about 10 items has definitely all been new. I am currently 10 1/2 weeks along, so hopefully in a couple of weeks the whole sick/tired thing will begin to fade. Bryan has been his usual wonderful self, very supportive and not even taking issue with the fact that he's been on his own for dinner every night for about a month now (I cannot handle the smell of just about anything cooking...).

Anyway, that coupled with the holidays (luckily I had all of my shopping done early) and an unexpected trip to California after Thanksgiving for my grandma's funeral has left me without energy to get much done other than those things which are absolutely necessary.

Everyone tells me that once I get through the first trimester I will return to my happy, energetic self which will of course leave lots more time for posting on the blog :)