Kentucky!

It's about time I update this blog! We've been in our new home in Kentucky almost 6 weeks! Plus I didn't blog at all in July or August! I vow to catch up :) Here's a little run down of our arrival here.

 My parents did us a HUGE favor and drove our minivan from Utah to KY for us. They left on a Tuesday morning and drove everyday, stopping to do a session at 3 temples along the way. That means I got to stay behind for one final week in Heber before flying out on Saturday to meet up with them in Louisville. Ben graduated from Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Jackson, SC on that Friday and got a ride to Louisville with another soldier, so we all met up there on Saturday. It couldn't have worked out any better!

I was nervous to fly all day with 3 kids by myself, but it ended up going just fine.
My fabulous cousin Beth took us to the airport at an unfortunate morning hour and got a pass to get to the gate so that she could help us through security. It was so wonderful to have that help! I don't think I would have made it through without her. The girls each had a backpack for the flight with snacks, a new sippy cup, sweater, a change of clothes, and a few surprises to keep them entertained on the flight. I also loaded the iPod Touch and my iPhone with new games and videos. I had lots of stuff in my bag for Grant as well. I may have been a little over-prepared, but better safe than sorry. We had a short flight from SLC to Phoenix before hopping on a longer flight from there to Louisville. The first leg of our flight was full but there was ONE empty seat on the second leg and they gave it to ME! So I got bring on Grant's carseat and he sat in that. It gave my tired mommy arms a rest. It's hard to help two other little kids when you have a heavy, squirmy 8 month old in your arms.  

Claire fell asleep for awhile on the second flight. Grant did too (as well as on the first). I think he had recently woken up when this picture was taken.
(all of the pictures for this post were taken with my phone :/ )

Paige had to sit across the aisle from us since we got the extra seat for Grant. This lovely teenager  sat next to her and Paige ordered her around the entire time. I felt a little bit bad a first but then decided to just be happy it wasn't me :)

Ben met us at the airport (they let him come to the gate!) and then we were off to Fort Knox. Its about 40 min from the airport.  Our first stop, before even checking in at our hotel, was at our new home on post. I was dying to see what it looked like, as well as check out our new neighborhood.  We hadn't yet signed for the home, but that was the plan come Monday. Here are the very first pictures we took:

 the backyard:

 Paige's first pronouncement after seeing the fenced yard, "YES! Now we can get a dog!" 

Hmmm, not so fast . . .

On Monday we signed for the home and just a couple of hours later, our "household goods" were delivered. They'd been in storage in KY awaiting our arrival ever since we moved out of our house in Orem last May.

Here is the empty front room before the delivery trucks arrived:

 I took a bunch of other photos of the house before all of our belongings arrived, but they're on my mom's camera. The whole first floor is laminate flooring, and the house is painted the same as this throughout. I am really happy with the paint color; it was a happy surprise because it just happens to go really well with our decor. It's 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, with a 2 car garage. About 2100 sq. feet. And as you saw, a pretty big fenced backyard. We love it.

Here's one of the many playgrounds scattered around post. They are all newer looking and lovely. One of them is just 3 houses up the street from us.

Our first impressions of Fort Knox were that we could be very happy here, and nothing has changed that for us yet!  Paige loves her new school and got a fantastic kindergarten teacher. Claire is loving having the run of the house for a few hours a day while Paige is away. Grant has started to get opinions and is army crawling and will soon be getting into everything.  And Ben's job is going really well so far, and he is enjoying not having the stress of school. 

I've been having a good time finding a place for everything in our home and getting rid of stuff that doesn't fit or we no longer need. My goal was to have every box unpacked in one month. I figure if we're going to be living the military lifestyle and moving every 2-3 years then we better learn how to settle in fast and make every new place feel like home. I didn't quite reach the one month goal, but there are only a few boxes of "craft room" and "garage" stuff that haven't been unloaded yet. And the only room that isn't "done" is the craft room. I'm pretty happy with that progress :) We're working with what we already have, and really the only thing that I think we'll "need" are a couple of area rugs for all that hard floor downstairs. Otherwise, we are good to go.

Here is what that front room looks like now that we're all moved in:

 from the other side:

And we even did a little decorating for Halloween this week:

We're happy to be all together once again and settling into our new home!

32

For my birthday this year Ben surprised me with an iPad. And it really was a surprise; I had no idea! Being out of school and having a job really pays off, literally :) That evening we all went to dinner at a chain restaurant here that always looks packed called Cheddar's (the food was decent,  it was kid friendly, and pretty inexpensive) and then to dessert at Red Mango in Elizabethtown. This Red Mango is self-serve and had about 12 flavors. Yum.

The next day was a Friday and Ben had the day off. He told me we could spend the day doing whatever I wanted. So first we drove about 30 miles to the 6pm Outlet in Shepherdsville. This outlet receives all the returns from Zappos and the prices are unreal! There are SO many shoes and everything is at least 50% off. There are tons of items that are 60% and 70% off and on top of that they give a 10% military discount. So yeah, that's the first place I wanted to go for my birthday :) Ben stayed outside with the kids and I spent an hour browsing by myself. I found a bunch of shoes for Paige and Claire and my nieces, but couldn't decide on anything for myself because I was feeling a little pressure to hurry up (Grant was hungry).

This is what I left with:

 

9 pairs of shoes for $100. What?! So crazy. 6 of the pairs got shipped off to my nieces in Las Vegas. Watch out, friends and relatives, if you come to visit I WILL drag you here.

After the outlet we headed north to Louisville. We ate lunch at Cheesecake Factory and then headed over to Cost Plus World Market and then Trader Joe's. A couple of weeks ago I asked for advice on Facebook about what to buy since I hadn't shopped there since high school. I got a lot of suggestions and we came home with more snacks than we've ever had in our house at one time. And guess what. They were ALL good! Very impressed.  Here's Ben goofing around with Grant in the parking lot.

After Trader Joe's we took a quick drive by the Louisville Temple, 'cause I wanted to see it. Better watch for it. Don't blink or you'll miss it! And then we went to stock up at Costco. Every time Ben feels homesick he wants to go to Costco in Louisville. Something about it just feels like home! Hmmm, maybe we spent too much time there when we lived barely 5 minutes away from one in Orem :)

It was a fun day of doing exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks for a great birthday, Ben!

Grant - 6 months

Grant is the happiest baby. He looks like this most of the time. I don't want to seem like I keep bragging about him on here, but he seriously could not be any easier - I'll just leave it at that.

He turned 6 months old today. I can't believe how fast time is flying by. He is getting big so fast, but I won't know exactly how big until his 6 month checkup which won't be until next month because we're in St. George and his pediatrician is in American Fork, blah, blah, blah. Anyway he's heavy and long and his head is huge. He seems to be maybe a little developmentally behind physically. He's rolled over from front to back and back to front exactly one time each, and it happened to be on the same day. I blame his "laziness", as I call it, on his big old head - it's hard to move around when you have to maneuver that thing. But he likes his jumperoo, and sits and plays with toys in his bumbo, and is putting everything he can get his hands on into his mouth, so I think he's just fine. Plus, how can I complain when he's always smiling at me like that?!

He got his first tooth on Sunday, June 24th (3 days ago) and bit me while nursing for the first time today. He was not happy with my reaction but didn't pout for long. Hopefully it won't take too long for him to learn that that is NOT okay.  He hasn't liked rice cereal the two times he's had it and gagged on the rice wafer thing I gave him today. After that he wanted nothing more to do with it. That's fine, I'm okay with moving forward slowly on the food thing.

Grant has gotten SO playful and is very ticklish and giggly. He seems to like everyone, even his annoying sisters, and is happy with whomever is holding him. He's gotten more wiggly and there's a feisty streak in his emerging personality. For instance, he likes to grab my face or hair and pull me close, growl, squeal and get me to nibble on his cheeks. :)

I could do that all day long.

First Bites

Grant's first tooth broke through on Sunday. I wouldn't have even noticed except he was chewing on my finger and I felt it. It doesn't seem to be bothering him at all.

In related news, he had his first tastes of rice cereal today. After the first few slurps, he wasn't a fan. This is the best picture that I took on my phone. It was taken when we were finishing up and he was no longer very interested. I have others on my camera but the computer is being monopolized by a Netflix watching two-year-old, so I can't download them yet. I have to say that I'm not too excited about this stage the third time around. It's cute and funny for a little while to watch them try to figure out this new skill, but really it's mostly a messy hassle and I'd rather just keep breast-feeding exclusively. Maybe I just don't want my sweet baby to grow up.

Potty Time

Yay! Claire got potty trained last week! She was very excited about her new underwear and is doing awesome. I use the three day method (which I also used with Paige) and once again it worked like a charm. No pull ups, dry when she wakes up, and consistently telling me every time - it doesn't get much better than that! She is a full 8 months older than when I trained Paige, but because of the baby and then moving, I wanted to wait until things were more stable. Plus I had my parents to help out. Here she is on her first day with a couple of drinks and hanging out in her princess panties. I love those cute buns.

Grant's Birth

I know! Grant is 5 months old. But here is his birth story anyway. I am finally posting it. I'm not sure what took me so long because I wrote it all down soon after I had him. Anyway, better late than never: If you don't like birth stories than stop reading.... now:

Based on my experience when I gave birth to Claire, I spent this entire pregnancy worried that I was going to labor too fast and not make it to the hospital in time. I also planned on another unmedicated labor.

I started spotting on Monday, December 26th. I didn't think much about it until that evening before bed and decided if it kept up that night, I would call the OB in the morning. I woke up the next morning at 5 am with a dull backache and the thought "today is the day!" running through my head. I couldn't go back to sleep and so I got up and got ready, finished the laundry, cleaned the bathrooms, and put the "last minute" items into our hospital bags. When 9 am finally rolled around I called my OB's office and left a message for the nurse telling her that I'd had a little bit of spotting since the day before and that it was now bright red. She called back around 10:30 and recommended that I head to L&D to be checked out and to monitor the baby. Ben and I arrived at AF Hospital labor and delivery around noon. When the nurse at the hospital checked me I was 3 cm dilated and 90% effaced, which I had been at my 37 week prenatal appointment the Wednesday before, and she didn't see any obvious signs of bleeding. They strapped me to the baby heart rate and contraction monitors for an hour. By the end of that hour of monitoring I was dilated to 4 cm. The nurse also asked me how I was handling my contractions. I said, "oh I just a had a few braxton hicks", but apparently (according to the monitors and nurse) I was having regular contractions that were 3 to 5 minutes apart the entire time. So after speaking over the phone with the on-call OB, the nurse came back to tell me that they wanted to monitor me for another hour. I continued to have regular contractions during the second hour as well, but there was no change in my cervix. The nurse offered to check me in, but I declined, even though she expressed concern that if I left I may not make it back in time because of my history of fast labor. I worried too, but didn't want to stick around the hospital all day!

So we left the hospital at 3pm. My sister, Noelle, was at our house with our girls and her 10 wk old baby girl. I had regular contractions the whole way home, sometimes they were 3 1/2 min apart and sometimes they were 6. They weren't painful yet, but making me catch my breath. I was really wondering what to do. I didn't want to wait too long because what if things pick up speed? The hospital is 20 minutes away and there was all sorts of road construction. I worried about getting to AF during rush hour. We got home and I ate some leftover pizza from the night before. We just hung out for awhile and timed contractions with an app on my iPod Touch. Noelle went home for a bit to pack an overnight bag for herself and Coco in case we decided to go back to the hospital. Her sweet baby just hung out in the swing while she was gone.

At 6 pm I decided to take a warm shower and lie down to see if contractions would slow down or go away. If anything they got more intense (but not closer together). So we decided to go back to the hospital if only to see if I was actually making any progress. On the way there my contractions seemed less regular so right before the turn to the hospital I told Ben to take me to Red Mango in American Fork instead. We sat there for about an hour eating our yogurt and smoothie respectively and timing contractions. I still wasn't sure what was going on with them, so we decided to go walk around at the Target across the street. I thought more walking might help. We spent about an hour there just browsing but the contractions don’t get any more painful or regular. We didn’t buy anything. I wasn't sure what to do but figured we might as well go to the hospital to get checked again. I didn’t want to have to stay for an hour of monitoring so I asked if they’d just check my cervix since I was already there that afternoon, but the nurse said that I had to be monitored. I was still at a 4 when they checked me and my contractions were regular during the hour of monitoring after which the nurse said I made “some” progress, but she didn’t want to officially check me in yet since I was going unmedicated. She and I agreed that I should roam the halls of the hospital for an hour and then she’d check me again. So Ben and I went to an unpopulated wing of the maternity floor, and I paced and timed contractions while Ben tried to rest on a bench. Poor guy was pretty sick with a sinus infection (he was also sick when I was in labor with Claire) and I secretly wondered if he was trying to steal some attention away from me.  

After an hour the nurse came to find me and I went back to triage to get checked. By now Ben had fallen asleep so I didn’t wake him for this part. I had dilated to a 5 and my contractions had gotten more intense so we decided that I should be admitted. I woke Ben and the nurse led us to our L&D room. It was midnight. The on-call OB, Dr. Cloward, (our regular OB was on a post-Christmas week long vacation with his family) came in to talk to us, and she suggested breaking my water to speed things up. I wasn't against that idea but I wanted to wait a little longer. I worried that if we did that too early I’d have a long labor of really painful contractions. The OB left to go sleep in the docs sleeping quarters and said she’d come back when we were ready. Ben and I started walking laps around the nursing station. We had to stop every half hour to monitor the baby’s heart rate for 5 minutes. Intermittent monitoring is one of the best things about unmedicated labor. There's no monitoring contractions, no iv, no continuous fetal monitoring. I had a heploc in case of an emergency.  At 2 o’clock I was getting tired of walking and I asked the nurse when the doctor planned to come back. She said the OB was planning on checking in on me at 3am but that she could go wake her if I was ready for her to break my water. I decided to wait until 3. Ben slept on the couch in the L&D room and I spent the next hour walking by myself. By 3 am the contractions had definitely gotten more intense and I was really feeling the lack of sleep. The nurse checked me and said I was at a 6+. The OB came in a little after 3 and we decided it was time to speed things up. I woke Ben to tell him to get ready because I was really going to need his help now. I warned him that the contractions were going to get painful quick once the water broke. I could remember that from my quick labor with Claire. Dr. Cloward broke my water then and it took a couple of tries because, according to her, my bag of water was really "tough”. It seemed as though my contractions stopped completely for about 5 minutes after that which gave me a little time to clean up and get ready. The OB left and said she’d be right down the hall. She predicted that it wouldn’t be long and joked that she wouldn’t be surprised if the nurse called her back in right after walking out the door. Soon after that the contractions really picked up and it was probably only 15 minutes before I was clearly uncomfortable. 

I wasn't laying in the bed, but I was gushing amniotic fluid with every contraction so I stayed near my bed to lean on it and stand over some towels the nurse had laid out on the floor. The nurse soon suggested the birth ball or birthing bar and I told her I’d like to try the birth ball. She brought it in and laid a small towel across it for me to sit on. Again, I was at the side of the bed so that I could lean forward on it during the contractions and rock back and forth on the ball. It helped a lot. I asked Ben to do some counter-pressure on my back, remembering that when I was in labor with Claire that that really helped when the midwife did it. I ended up yelling at him not to touch me though because it felt all wrong and made it hurt more, and when the contraction subsided I asked him to go look up the technique in the Birth Partner book and try again. He came back a couple of contractions later and got it right that time although it didn’t seem to be as much as a relief as with my last labor.  Soon I was feeling quite a bit of pressure and felt like I needed to go to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet for a couple of contractions. I honestly don't know if I ever went to the bathroom, but I was feeling even more pressure. I told the nurse that I thought I was ready to push and then climbed up on the bed to be checked. She said I was at a 9+ and called the OB in. They started prepping the room although I honestly have no idea what was happening around me at this point because I was lying on my right side in the bed, trying to stay relaxed between contractions that were right on top of each other. Ben was there doing counter pressure I know because he was pushing on my back and I was lying on my side holding on to the bed rails. I was pulling myself up the bed (it wasn't flat) with my arms while simultaneously pushing into Ben’s hands with my back. He was basically holding me up on the bed and I remember having to scoot up the bed at one point to avoid falling off completely. 

The OB checked and said I was complete and I turned over on my back to start pushing. Pushing didn’t take long. I felt the ring (rim?) of fire this time, which I didn’t feel with Claire, and unlike last time pushing didn’t feel like as much of a relief compared to contractions. Also unlike last time no one had to remind me how to push. In fact they told me to stop pushing. He was coming too fast. It felt almost impossible to stop pushing, but I tried. Nonetheless, 3 min. after I began pushing, our baby boy was born. It was less than an hour since my water broke. 

He was covered in vernix, and looked like a little white alien to me. I got to hold him right away. Ben cut the cord while I snuggled our newborn, and soon the nurses asked me if they could take him for a moment while I delivered the placenta and the OB stitched up one small lateral tear. When they were done with our baby (and the OB was done with me) they gave him back to me. We nursed for the first time and he did well. It took him awhile to latch on but he eventually did.  We got to hold and snuggle him in the delivery room for 2 whole hours before they moved us and took him for his first bath. I felt so lucky! Just me and Ben and our baby. It was shift change time, so we didn’t even have any interruptions. And I was feeling pretty good so when it did come time to move us, I asked to go to the nursery too, to watch Grant’s first bath. 

After all that worrying about too quick of a labor, I had my longest labor yet. Once my water breaks though, watch out! I feel so blessed that things went so smoothly,  especially after a full day of uncertainty and slow progression.  I didn't get to have my friend/doula there as planned (she was out of town for Christmas), but once again Ben was an amazing birth partner. Giving birth truly has to be one of life's greatest experiences.

First Picture

 After more clean up and eye drops

Two hour cuddle session with mom

In the nursery for his first bath

Back in our room

Thumbsucker

Grant is my first thumbsucker and I think it is so cute! Whenever I catch him in the act I try to take a picture. These were all taken between March 24th and May 6th (3 to just over 4 months old).