A Dream Realized

Like a couple of old folks, Ty and I have always, always enjoyed a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood together.  It was on one of these walks before we had a house, before we became parents, before we grew into what my former coworker refers to as "real adults", that we created a dream together.  The dream involved acquiring a tandem bike and a bike trailer to pull our kids in.  We've never forgotten that dream.  And last month, it happened.

Yaaaaaay!  We decided that this was the year.  We planned to put our tax return toward a beautiful tandem bicycle.  Much to our surprise, some awesome friends from our previous ward (gosh I loved that ward), showed up at our house with a tandem for us "store" for them.  Seriously.... people are just awesome.  Since it's not technically ours, I'd like to introduce you to our new foster bike.

This little beauty has already brought multiple smiles, giggles, and nap times into our lives.  We have loved it.  Yay for dreams coming true!!

Pictures

I thought that since we were catching up on Audree's entrance into the world, we ought to share these pictures as well.  I love seeing my girls together in these little images.  It has only been a matter of months and they already love each other so much!  Seriously, having 2 girls this close in age is more fun than I ever imagined!

More updates soon to come...

Hello stranger!  It's been a while... to say the least.  It turns out that it's pretty hard to keep up a blog when you don't have the internet.  Go figure.  I'm pretty sure any readers we once had have now dropped off the face of the planet due to our extended leave of absence, so this post is purely being written for selfish purposes.

Purpose: to document the addition of our lovely Audree.  It's got to happen, guys.

Our lovely Audree Ino was born this past May and she has completely captured our hearts.  Here's the story:
Little miss Audree thought it would be cool to throw her parents for a loop by flipping at 38 weeks.  I knew something had happened because I was in a lot of pain and did not feel any regular contractions.  My next appointment revealed that she had turned into a sideways (transverse) position, which stinks because it meant that a vaginal birth was totally out of the question.  Wanting to avoid a C-section, I got desperate.

We tried an external version, which failed.  Then we got antsy.  I searched the internet like crazy for different poses to visit again and again, exercises to do, etc... and we tried them all.  We put cold peas and a heating pad on stomach, tried the flashlight technique, visited a chiropractor regularly, and eventually visited a very interesting place to receive and acupuncture treatment (moxibustion).  Not only did these give us some awesome experience and exposure to new alternative medicine techniques, but they also successfully flipped our baby.  Yay!

Just 4 days before her due date, we were scheduled to help paint a garage, and attend a luncheon and a BBQ.  In preparation, I spent the morning making a ginormous salad while Aleah destroyed the house (she's a toddler, to expect anything less would be crazy talk).  Contractions started while said garage was being painted but I tried very hard to ignore them since they had been fairly constant for the past few weeks.

It became evident after our luncheon that these contractions were different but there was just no way I was going to waste me large, delicious salad.  So I did the only thing I could.  I made Tyler drive us all to the luncheon so I could drop off my salad and our beautiful Aleah before heading to the hospital.  Did I get some crazy looks?  Yes.  But all is well that ends well, right?  We visited briefly between contractions and then headed off to the hospital.

Tyler was kind enough to let me walk around the hospital grounds and labor on my own before entering the hospital.  This time I was careful not to get too carried away since I knew we still needed to receive the strep antibiotic.  After hearing me say a naughty word, Tyler kindly lead me inside at which point we were admitted and told that we might need an emergency C-section.  Seriously?  I had heard that phrase a bazillion times and had just about had enough of it.

In this case, it was because Audree (who we were calling Teagen at the time, but I'll get to that later) was not down far enough.  Without her fully engaged, the various medical professionals were nervous that my water would break and the chord would come out before the baby, which would obviously complicate matters... to say the least.

We slowed labor down and gave her some time to decide which way she wanted to come out.  Thankfully, she slid down further and once they broke my water, she came quickly.  Two pushes later we got to meet our sweet little girl.

We had been calling her Teagen for the past 6 months but I always told Tyler that if I had a red headed girl, her name would be Audree.  Surprise!  A red head!  I never thought I would have a redheaded child since it seems to skip generations.  Add that to the fact that she was born on Audrey Hepburn's birthday and it's no wonder we switched names so willingly.

She was (and still is) perfect in every way.  Sweet, beautiful, and slept through the night the day we brought her home from the hospital!

A couple of random memories from the day:
1. RSL was of course playing a very important game while we were in the hospital.  Ty initially tried very hard to push it out of his mind but I caved and let him watch it on the TV while I labored.  The nurses were horrified.  You are welcome Tyler.
2. After the external version failed, I told my doctor that I would laugh out loud if she came out with red hair since we have such a reputation for being stubborn.  Haha!
3.  I LOVE my doctor!  He came in for me at 1:30 in the morning voluntarily because he had been telling me for weeks that he wanted to be the one to deliver the baby whether he was on call or not.  He also suggested moxibustion to me and made sure I knew not to believe other acupuncturists who told me they could do it.  He said to make sure they were from China and he was so excited when I tried it.  We had an incredible experience with him.
4.  Note to self-- do not have babies at this hour in the morning if I can help it.  Laboring and not sleeping for several hours makes for VERY unflattering baby pictures.
5.  I cried for Aleah in the hospital so my doctor signed my release early.  I love my babies!

We feel blessed beyond words to have this beautiful little angel baby in our lives.  Our family is even more fun with her addition and Aleah loves being a big sister!

We're slowly catching up... here's October!

For what it's worth, I wrote this in the actual month of October.  I am a slacker.

Spoiler Alert!!!  ;)
October was such a fun month for us!  First and foremost, our baby girl turned one year old!  Does that make her a toddler?  I dearly hope not.  I want to prolong having my “baby” as long as possible J  We also went to some great soccer games, had a fantastic Halloween, made some little changes to our house, attended a Western festival in Wellsville and discovered Aleah’s sweet tooth.  And that’s it in a nutshell.  

Slow-mo version:

My little, 5 pound baby is now a one year old.  How on earth did this happen?  I swear it was just a few days ago that we brought her home from the hospital and put her in her newborn-sized fleece sleeper only to find that she could get totally lost in it while we laughed and cried over trying to figure out how we ever managed to survive without her.  Weird.

Her birthday was just so dang fun!  I’ve compiled pictures from various wonderful guests who attended since as this blog proves, I’m terrible at taking them. 

Aleah has always gone crazy with excitement every time I have made chocolate frosting in the past; so naturally I smeared it all over her cake.  However, she was so weirded  out by eating cake while surrounded by people gawking at her, that she totally lost interest in the frosting.  Thankfully she did end up eating it, but not nearly with the zeal I was expecting.  We kept the party low key with family only and for record-keeping purposes, here’s who attended: both grandmas and grandpas, Uncle Jake and Aunt Kristin, Aunt Kinli and Kelsi, JoAnna and Greg, Merlynn, Great Grandma and Grandpa Thompson, Great Grandma Grange, Aunt Stacie and Uncle Kelly, Kirtlyn, Deacon, and Great Aunt Patty.  The rest of the party will be easier to explain with pictures so I’ll leave it to captions to tell the rest.  It really was tons of fun though and such an exciting time for our family.

 Aleah’s 12 month check up went very well.  I’ve been looking forward to this for the past few months because I love seeing how much she has grown each time.  Dr. Watts told us that Aleah has advanced motor skills and is growing very well.  She weighed 21 pounds, 4.5 ounces.  She was in the 50^th percentile for her height and the 55^th for her weight.  This was weird for me to hear since she was so incredibly low on the charts when she was born, then beefed up from all that creamy milk and quickly rose to the top of the charts.  Now that she is in the middle, I can say that in the past year, she has spent time in each zone of the size charts J

Aleah is getting better and better with her soccer playing skills.  She also conquered her shape ball for the first time all by herself, has started doing “quick feet” with daddy, can pick out red, blue, yellow, and green, has fallen in love with purses, and is sleeping much better (most nights anyway).  Big strides this month!

Aleah also got to dress up for her first time this Halloween.  I had the most awesome peacock costume all planned out to make.  Then we saw those soft, warm Carter’s Halloween costumes at Costco that were considerably less than we were going to spend on the peacock costume.  I couldn’t justify spending more on the peacock so we ended up with this cute pumpkin costume that Aleah loved.  She got so excited whenever we got it out to put on.  She always ran up and tried to put her arms through the leg holes.  We chose not to take her trick or treating this year since we didn’t want her eating all that sugar and she would have no clue what was going on anyway.  We did however take her to a fun ward party and out to see family and she ate it right up.

We’re still finishing up some projects that have been in the works since we moved in.  Here they are:

It has just occurred to me that this entire post is about Aleah.  Haha!  I remember being mildly annoyed by other people who only wrote about their children in the past.  Then I became a mom.  Guess what?  This little girl is my life!  Her joys are my joys, her bad days become my bad days, etc…  So yes, this entire thing will probably be about her.  But I’m so totally okay with that.  Anyone who is not, can stick it. Haha!

In mid-October, we attend the Western Festival with Tyler’s family in Wellsville.  Here we made a doll out of corn stock that looked eerily voodooish, rode on a train, petted an obese horse, looked at goats and chickens, watched a cowboy skit, listened to cowboy music, and slid down a big slide.  It was a lot of fun. 

For my next comment about the festival, I’m going to give some background.  For those who don’t know, I’ve been learning a little bit about babywearing.  I love it!  I think it’s crazy that women all over the world wear their babies except here.  It seems like the large majority of our culture here thinks that babies ought to be transported by carrying car seats and pushing strollers.  I like babywearing much more for many reasons.  Some of those reasons include spinal and hip development, ease/convenience, baby/mama bond, prevention of over-stimulation on baby’s part, and pure enjoyment.  In the process of learning about some of these things, I bought a Boba 3G carrier.  It has girly print and Tyler has wanted very little to do with it.  However, he voluntarily wore it at the Western Festival for the first time and I think I’ve converted him now too.  It was so cool to watch him give it a try and to feel all the benefits that I’ve been telling him about it for the past few months.

The remainder of the month was filled with yard sales, soccer games, and fun with friends and family.  Speaking of which, Rachel and I saw “The Drowsy Chaperone” together at a theatre I’ve been dying to visit for years now.  It was tons of fun!  Did we take pictures?  No.  I’m terrible.  I rest my case.

The holiday season is approaching now and we are anticipating lots of fun family and friendly gatherings in upcoming months.  Yay!  In the meantime, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed spending October together this month and are loving being a little family in our new home.  TTFN!

Halloween Night

Aleah playing with her cousins and Grandpa on her birthday

Wake Me Up When September Ends...

Funny… I actually wrote the post for September a few weeks ago.  When I opened the file just now to add the final touches, I realized I hated it.  Sometimes it’s hard to write when the time to do so is shoved in between short nap times and errands that need to be run on my days off.  Unfortunately, my writing definitely shows this.  Sorry y’all!  I hope it’s not too terrible.  Anyway I’m starting anew with this one so hopefully it goes better this time around.

September was a big month for us!  It’s the first month that we actually spent living in our new home!  I feel like I’m constantly writing about house stuff what with the selling, buying, fixing up, etc…  Hopefully I can tone that down after this month’s post.  But honestly, I can’t not talk about our first month here! 

We love our new home!  Sometimes when I walk through the door, I still get that girly, excited feeling where something inside me jumps and says, “this beautiful home is yours… like… for real!”  Haha!  Don’t let me give you the wrong idea; it’s not huge or fancy by any means.  Our house may not be Parade of Homes material but to me, it is perfect.  It’s not big, but its space is used wisely and the tall ceilings make it feel bigger and more open.  I’ll stop there before I start gushing over all the details that no one wants to read about.  Basically, it suits us.  It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted and what I pictured for my family and I am so thankful to have it.  Plus, it’s the first time I’ve had my own central air and I am thrilled about that!  Wonderful!

Our new ward here is great!  We were surprised to walk into the chapel and find that it was the tiniest ward either of us had ever seen.  It didn’t take long for us to fall in love when we learned that it was made up of a tight-knit group of young families like us and that members had prayed and fasted us there.  Our Sunday school class was a marriage class that catered to young couples.  It was a blast to gather together and learn from a hilarious, slightly more seasoned couple in the ward.  One of the couples even hosted a big neighborhood party with giant blow up toys and a rock wall and stuff! 

After only 2 weeks however, the announcement was made that they were changing our ward boundaries.  That tight-knit group of young families has now been disbursed into other wards.  While this makes us very sad, we’re looking toward the future and are excited to get to know even more people now.  This Sunday will only be our second week in the new ward so we haven’t gotten cozy just yet.

Aleah has developed all sorts of new skills this month.  While I’m sure I can’t name them all, they include large amounts of language and communication.  She understands so much of what we’re saying now!  It’s so cool!  I frequently voiced instructions to her throughout the month just to see how much she understood and I was totally blown away with the results!  She may not be able to say all the words back to us yet, but she knows and understands many of them already.

She has also started eating more solid foods now.  From what I can tell so far, her favorite foods are chocolate frosting and Pasta Roni.  She won’t be breaking any healthy records with that though, so we’ll keep working on her.

I can’t remember if I wrote about this last month or not but guess what?  Aleah is turning into quite the little soccer girl!  She loves kicking the ball back and forth with daddy and what’s more?  She is amazing at it!  I can’t believe how much fun it is to watch her run around and kick the ball (even the tiny tennis ball size)! Tyler is of course ecstatic about this new development.  So far she is left-footed, which apparently is a very sought-after soccer trait or something like that.

Also new this month, this mommy is a newly converted yard sale addict.  What have I been missing all these years?  The Grange girls took me out in September and I had a blast!  Not only was it tons of fun, but we got some killer deals too!  I’m hoping to get as many Christmas and birthday presents for Aleah as I can at yard sales now!  So far we’ve been able to get her several books, toys, and clothes for next to nothing.  Additionally, we got a cute table for our living room, a few decorations, and even clothes for me ($1 for darling shirts?  Don’t mind I do). I am officially addicted.

Tyler is performing most awesomely in all of his classes and enjoys playing soccer regularly on base for his paid exercise time.  Also, he has totally mastered the art of cookie-making.  Allow me to explain: when I found out I wasn’t supposed to eat cookie dough while I was pregnant with Aleah, I vowed never to make cookies until that changed.  I always, always eat the dough and refraining from doing so is simply unrealistic.  So ever since then Tyler has been the cookie baker at our house.  Tyler’s cookies blew my mind this month.  Whatever the secret to baking killer chocolate chip cookies is, he has found it and the convect bake on our new oven cooks them perfectly.  I confess, I’m a little jealous that he can outbake me now.  But there’s no turning back at this point, I’m officially passing the trophy on to him.  So next time you see me and notice that my butt no longer fits in my pants, you can thank Tyler because I cannot stop eating those delicious things and he can’t stop baking them. 

And with that, here are the pictures we’ve saved from September:

Cabinet Before

Here is Ty's work in progress on our cabinet detail

Unfortunately this is the most recent picture we have of the after on his cabinet.  You can still tell it's cool though, right?

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After (fridge hadn't been delivered yet... sorry)

Aleah's Room Before

Aleah's Room After

Play Room Before

Play Room After

Living Room Before

Living Room After

Master Bedroom Before

Master Bedroom After

Tyler added this super cool trim to all of our pillars.  Now you can tell they're separate pieces from the wall

Aleah's first haircut with Mommy!

Here is a view of the new lights and fan we added



               

Here's a pic of my latest project.  I wanted a bright red chandelier so I bought one, sanded it down,  painted it, glossed  it, bejeweled it, and used and abused Tyler's skills all along the way.  It was a lot of fun and I love having a splash of color hanging from the ceiling!

Another cool new light fixture we added.  I found this one bargain-hunting on one of our yard sale adventures.  Sweet deal!

Oh the messes she can make!  Aleah dumped out our entire box of Q-Tips (her very favorite), one-by-one.  She was so thrilled with herself, that we didn't have the heart to stop her.  Here is a pic of her getting started.

We recently learned that Aleah eats solids much better when she is eating at the table with us.  She totally devoured this corn on the cob and relished every single second of it :) 

Here is an action shot of our monkey baby!  She kept climbing up the ladder while I was decorating our shelf so finally we quit trying to stop her, and let Tyler help her do it the safe way.

This is Aleah's favorite hiding spot... behind the ottoman.  Sorry for the mess, I was pulling out our Halloween decor.  Every day when it's time to get her dressed, she runs and hides.  This baby just loves being in her birthday suit!