Monday, December 28, 2009

Happy anniversary, sweetheart


Young and in love

Today is our ten year anniversary! We've been thinking back on this day ten years ago and all of the memories that we have of getting married. My brothers lived next door to me, and they came over as I was getting ready. They were asking if I had everything - "Dress? Yep. Veil? Yep. Marriage license? Yep, it's outside in my car."

That's when I remembered that I had left my car, with the marriage license inside, in Salt Lake after moving to our apartment the day before! Yikes - we're in trouble!

So, while I frantically tried to get my hair dry and somewhat curled before the wedding, my brothers called Brandon only to find the phone was busy. Yep, his youngest brother was on the internet on this, the most important of all days. He was checking his email. (Love ya', Jason!) So, my brothers did an emergency breakthrough, after arguing with the operator that this really was an emergency (when she heard what the emergency was, she was very helpful!)

So, since we were young with no money, his dad forked over another $40 so we could run to the court house and get another marriage license. (We were very nervous, too, that the courthouse wouldn't be open since it was right after Christmas. Luckily, they had a few offices open, one being the one we needed.)

Meanwhile, we were supposed to be at the temple by this time, and my parents were freaking out because we weren't there. But, we made it, and even had time to sit in one of the sealing rooms for about ten minutes before the wedding, contemplating what we were about to do. We had a friend ask us later if we were nervous about getting married, but honestly, we weren't. We never experienced pre-wedding jitters, or cold feet. It was just right.

(Just an interesting tidbit, here: during the ceremony, there were three Wayne's present in the room - my dad, Jerry Wayne, Brandon's dad, Wayne, and our sealer, whose name was also Wayne.)

After our wedding and pictures (in freezing cold, but sunny weather) we had our wedding luncheon, where Brandon's mom surprised us with French Silk Pie for dessert. She had gotten a VERY good deal on these, so got them for our dessert. Brandon's favorite dessert ever is French Silk Pie, so he was in heaven.


Mmm, this is SO good.

(And, yes, my Hi-lite girls, if you look closely, you can see I have a pencil holding my hair up!)

By the time the luncheon was over, Brandon was feeling miserable. He woke up that morning with a cold, and it just got progressively worse as the day went on. So, we went back to my apartment to load up the rest of my stuff, then headed off to home in Salt Lake.

That night, I woke up to Brandon getting in the shower at 3:30 a.m. I asked him what he was doing, and he said that he was freezing and might as well get up and get ready for the day. He didn't realize it was 3:30 in morning, but once he did, he threw some more blankets on the bed, turned the thermostat up and climbed back in for another few hours of sleep.

(We found out through trial and error that our thermostat was off by about twelve degrees. So, if we wanted it to be 73 in the house, we had to have it set at about 85! We had set the thermostat at about 72, so it was about 60 degrees in our apartment in the middle of winter. And our bed was right under the window. Can we say COLD????)



Our "Mission Impossible" pose during our reception


Cutting our cake. Look at how thin we both were!

Now, ten years later, we're both a little heavier, both have lost some hair (he's going bald, mine's getting shorter), and we've had four children. We've had our ups and downs, our fights and our makeups, our health problems, money problems, children problems, stressful times and more.

We've seen a child get badly hurt, but who has come out on top, despite everything that could have gone wrong. We've argued and hurt each other with words or actions, but in the end, we still love each other. We thought we loved each other when we got married, and we did. But, our love is deeper now. We're not just in love with each other, but we love each other - despite our faults and shortcomings.



So, to my handsome hubby, who I'm sure will read this sometime: I love you. With the birth of Connor, followed so closely by Thanksgiving and Christmas, I haven't really taken the time to focus on our anniversary. I have felt bad today that I haven't planned or done anything special for you as we celebrate this day. I hope to make it up to you, when my focus can be a little less on the little one, and a little more on you.

You've been so wonderful these past ten years - you've supported me in my weird, wacky times, in my most depressing times when I literally thought my heart would break, and through all of my highs and lows. You've cried with me and for me, and you're always ready and willing to give me a hug when I need one, or just want some extra love. You're my rock and my best friend. Thank you so much for your love, and for the fun of the past ten years. I look forward to the next ten, and for the rest of eternity!

I love you.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas from Connor . . .


Merry Christmas everyone!!!

. . . well, all of us really! I just wanted to share pictures of Connor smiling. 6 weeks old today - ooh, I just looked at the clock and realized that he's 6 weeks and 12 hours old right now. :)


Hi mommy!


Hey, what's that flashing light in front of my face??

Anyway, back to the smiling. You might say that he's too young to be smiling, or that it's just gas. But, I tell you - it's consistent enough and regular enough that I know it's real. He smiles in response to me talking, or cooing, or singing to him. He's even tried out his voice a couple of times, and ends up scaring himself 'cause he doesn't know where that sound came from! He's such a sweet, cute little bug, and I'm so happy to have him here.



Thank you all for your love and support! We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Santa who???

All tuckered out after a long day's work. Being the boss is hard!!!


Tuesday, December 15, 2009

He's got the tongue!



Isn't he cute???

Monday, December 7, 2009

It's snowing on my blog . . .

Thanks to my friend Tami for showing me how to add the snow!!!

Here's how to add the snow to your blog. Click here and follow the directions. It's sooo simple. I changed my background so that there wasn't any white in the background. That way you can see it snow!!

Merry Christmas.

I love our chiropractor

I love our chiropractor. Well, I love the work that he does! For the last couple of months of my pregnancy, and still continuing today, my fingers have tingled. You know when your hand goes to sleep, and you get the pins and needles feeling as the blood re-circulates? Yeah, that's the feeling in my fingers. Constantly. Never ending.

But, thanks to our chiropractor (who is also Brandon's cousins husband - got that?), we're making progress. Now, I can't feel the tingling until I touch my fingers to something. Apparantly, I have a huge knot of muscles wrapped around a nerve in my back, so he's been doing deep-tissue massage on my back and my forearms to loosen that up. Plus, a full adjustment each time I see him, plus acupuncture in my back and forearms, followed up by electric shock on my back and forearms.

The first time he adjusted my back - HOLY COW!!!! I swear you could hear the crack down the hall. But, I love getting the adjustments - I never knew how good I could feel after going to the chiropractor. (Mom, you should look into getting Dad to go to the chiropractor. It'd do him a world of good!)

So, I love our chiropractor. I'm getting some feeling back in my fingers, and my back feels great! If you've never been to a chiropractor, you should go! I was nervous the first time I went (the day before Thanksgiving), but would like to plan on going at least once a month after he's done working out the kinks! (Pun intended!)

Oh, and get this - his practice is a separate office built onto his home, and he has a three year old that Gavin can play with when we go. So, Gavin can play with his cousin. And, if he doesn't want to do that, his great-aunt (Dr. Welker's mother-in-law) is the receptionist there so she likes to play with Gavin.

And, today, Connor was pretty mad at the world while I was getting my treatment done. When Kathie (Brandon's aunt) came in to take the electrodes off my back, she said that Jason (Dr. Welker) had been able to calm Connor down. When I went out, I walked into his office to see Connor just staring up at his face, calm as could be! It was pretty cute! :)

Friday, December 4, 2009

My birth story . . . finally

So, you'll probably remember the post called so . . . labor . . . (if not, click here) and how I had been in labor since early morning on Wednesday. Here's the rest of the story.

My contractions pretty much backed off to one hard contraction every 45 minutes to an hour. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. So, I tried to rest as much as possible that day since I had been up so early. Brandon ended up going in to work late, and when he got home from work, we headed out the door to Sam's Club for some grocery shopping.

My contractions picked up, but were still pretty sporadic - nine minutes apart here, then three minutes, then fifteen . . . Kind of interesting walking through the middle of Sam's Club telling three different boys to stop climbing on the shelves or playing with the toys, and having to stop in the middle of the aisle to breathe through a contraction! I got a lot of funny looks that day.

Anyway, we came home and I made dinner (one of my favorites - breaded chicken breast, peas, mashed potatoes and white gravy. Yummy!) By that point, my contractions were about every ten minutes apart, so I went and laid down on the couch to time them and to rest. I helped Scott do some homework, then managed to walk downstairs for nighttime prayers with the boys.

We got the boys in bed (by around 8:30 or 9:00), then sat down and watched some NCIS (or NCIS LA; I don't remember for sure) for an hour while my contractions got progressively stronger. Not closer together, really - they were still kind of sporadic, so, still disappointed, I decided to go get ready for bed. As soon as I got up and was walking around, washing my makeup off, getting my pajamas on . . . they picked up. 3 - 5 minutes apart, and really strong.

By 11:00, I was struggling to get through the contractions without some help, so I told Brandon to call his mom. We finished packing up our hospital bags, and I changed back into some clothes. By the time Brandon's mom got to the house, I was crying through contractions, so we left to head to the hospital.

We got there around 11:45 and got all checked in. (Even with all of the "pre-registration" they still had to ask me about 15 million questions before I was "checked in." I.E. When was the last time you ate? When did you last used the bathroom? What's your birthdate and full name?" I wanted to scream.) But, they checked me and I was only dilated to a three. So, they broke my water, and found some meconium in the amniotic fluid. So, they put the NICU team on alert to be ready for my delivery.

Now, my intent was to do this labor naturally. But, by then, I had already been up since 2:30 the previous morning, with little to no rest that day. Almost a full 24 hours of dealing with contractions, and I was exhausted. Plus, I dilate really slowly, and I wasn't in the frame of mind to deal with hard contractions (think transition - the most painful point in labor) for another possible 24+ hours. So, I opted for an epidural. They pumped me full of four (I think) IV bags in about ten minutes, then the anesthesiologist came in. It was around 1:00 in the morning at this point.

He had me lean forward to get the needle in, and once the epidural kicked in, I was able to get some rest. I still wasn't able to sleep, but I was able to at least close my eyes and breathe normally. The nurses let me rest, and when the shift changed at 3:00 in the morning (seems like a weird time for a shift change to me), the new nurse came and checked me.

To our complete surprise, I was fully dilated! What? It's only been two hours since the epidural - with no pit. While we sat there and stared at each other in shock, she called the on-call dr. and started prepping the room. The NICU team came down and got the stomach pump and the air ready, and then it was time to push.

I pushed for a total of about ten minutes, and at 3:41 am, Connor Jay was born! 7 lbs. 13 oz. 20 1/2" long. The NICU team immediately took him to their cart to work on pumping his stomach while I delivered the placenta and the dr. stitched my tear. One stitch! With the others, my dr. was afraid that I would tear badly, so she always cut me instead, and I ended up with about six stitches. What a HUGE difference one stitch vs. six stitches makes!

Anyway, the NICU team took about fifteen minutes to pump his stomach and check his respiratory rate. By then, I was dying to hold my baby! They finally handed him to me, and it was heaven! But, he wasn't content to just lay there in my arms like my other babies were - he wanted to nurse. And, boy did he nurse! I had to coax my other kids to nurse after labor, but Connor latched on immediately, and other than when my milk came in and he couldn't latch on, he's been a pro at nursing!

The left us in the room for about an hour, then took us upstairs to the mother/baby unit. My first nurse there was an interesting character - far too chipper for 5:00 in the morning. She gave me quite a few interesting looks, and asked why I was so out of it! (Um, I've been in labor for 25 hours!) At the end of her shift that evening, she came to say goodbye and admitted that when she first saw me, she thought, "Oh boy. Here's another new mom that's been in labor for a couple of hours and is totally out of it. (I'm assuming that's what the looks were about.) But, then I read your file and realized that you'd been in labor for 25 hours, and my respect totally went up for you!"

We stayed in the hospital all of Thursday with lots of checkups from the various dr.'s and nurses. They only checked on me once Thursday night, and I had Connor sleep in the nursery with one bottle and one feeding from me. I felt so well, and Connor was doing so well that they let us come home on Friday morning!

My recovery has been awesome! Even my mom seemed surprised with how well I was recovering. Physically, I've been great, and emotionally I've been pretty good, with the exception being when Connor doesn't sleep well and I'm running on 4 - 5 hours of sleep during the day. He's a wonderful baby and I'm constantly thanking my Heavenly Father that we were finally able to get pregnant and have Connor join our family! We're all in love with him, and I look forward to watching him grow!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

My cute, FAT, brilliant baby

So, we had Connor's two week visit with his pediatrician today (he's actually three weeks today, but last week was Thanksgiving). I was expecting him to weigh 8 lbs. and some, but nope! He weighs 9 lbs. 5 oz. His pedi. says that they're super happy when a 2 - 3 week old comes back in having gained a pound back after their 5 day visit, so to have gained two back?

He told me to lay off on nursing so much and to let him self-soothe himself back to sleep when he wakes up every two hours at night. (Remember a previous post when I said that Connor would nurse almost constantly for about three hours in the evening?) And to let him suck on the binky after he eats.

And, a funny little story - B weighed 20 lbs. when he was just six months old. We started calling him the Michelin man because of all of his rolls. When he was a couple of years old, he saw an add on TV for the Michelin man and turned and asked, "Dad, why was I on TV?" :)


Michelin Man


B at six months - see the resemblance?

At the rate Connor's going, we'll have another Michelin baby on our hands if we're not careful! But, then, I LOVE chubby babies!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

My cute, brilliant baby



He ended up sitting here for almost an hour while I did my hair and fixed dinner. He was quite content and happy to try and hit that mirror. Pretty cute!