The Many Faces of P1

It's tricky business getting a good picture of your baby smiling, thank goodness for digital cameras!

And yes, I take too many pictures, but hey it's my privilege!

Wear Your Pants to Church Day - A Childish Dream Come True

So apparently this Sunday is "Wear your Pants to Church Day," so I thought I would put my 2 cents out there.

As a child, I hated wearing dresses! As soon as church was over I would change into pants. I would have loved to wear pants to church like the boys did. I was very much a tomboy. I wanted to go on all the camping trips like the boys did for scouts, instead of the once a year the young women got to go to camp. Simply put, I wanted to do all the things the boys got to do.

But the thing is, I grew up. I love being a woman. I wouldn't trade it for anything. It took time to understand it and embrace it. And I have always felt loved and respected in the LDS Church. If anything, I honestly feel like women are given more respect than men in the LDS church. Just listen to the talks in General Conference and you will hear them speak of their deep love and respect for women.

The point is that while it is a dream come true to wear pants to church, it is a childish dream of mine. And I am not a child anymore. As a woman, I will be wearing a dress to church this Sunday. Church is supposed to be about worshiping God, not making statements. And for me, it is important to dress my best on Sunday. And my best is a dress.

The Adventures of P1

Here's how the adventures of a handsome boy named (in this blog) Project 1 (or P1 for short) began...

At my 36, 38, 39 and 40 week prenatal visits, my midwife checked to see if I was progressing towards labor. At my 39 week check-up, my midwife was delivering twins so another doctor in the office did my check-up. Then at my 40 week visit, my midwife was again delivering a baby. Funny how this never happened at any of the other prenatal visits. At 40 weeks though, I decided I needed to visit with my actual midwife so I waited for her. Even at 40 weeks it looked like I was no where close to going into labor on my own. So we tentatively scheduled for me to be induced on October 24.

Well, on my due date (Oct. 16) my friend had her baby girl! She was due on the 24th, so we thought it was pretty funny that it looked like we were switching due dates. This was my friend's 3rd child, and she had once mentioned to me how she craves cinnamon after having a baby. So instead of having a baby on the 16th, I decided to make cinnamon rolls for her! It was my first attempt at ever making them, but I thought they turned out well!

I started taking long walks up and down the hills in Bountiful hoping to kick-start labor. The walks would cause my Braxton Hicks contractions to start being a lot more regular, but after a few hours they would start going away.

On October 18th, my midwife called me to let me know that she would be up in the Uintahs for the next few days. She gave me her cell phone number and told me to call her before I go to the hospital if I go into labor.

On October 19th, I decided I wanted Costa Vida for dinner. So PE and I walked down the hill to Costa Vida and shared a burrito. I was having pretty regular Braxton Hicks at this point in time (about every 5 minutes). After dinner, PE mentioned that he really wanted to get fries and bring them home so he could eat them with mayo and our chilean hot sauce. So we walked further down the hill to Wendy's and bought some fries. The walk back up the hill was a bit harder on me. My contractions were getting a little more intense, but I still wasn't sure if I was in labor or not. We made it back to our apartment and ate french fries w/ mayo & hot sauce while I kept track of how close together my contractions were. We were rudely interrupted by a salesman at this point in time. PE answered the door and let the guy give his sales pitch. The salesman could see me on the couch through the doorway and so he kept trying to drag me into the conversation, and I was a bit terse with him. I really wanted to tell him to go away and leave us alone because I was going to have a baby!!! Well, the salesman finally took "no" for an answer (after the 100th time), and left us alone.

My contractions were 3-5 minutes apart, but I still wasn't sure if they were real contractions or just braxton hicks because they weren't painful. We decided to try to get some sleep, and PE told me we couldn't go to the hospital until after midnight (so that insurance doesn't charge us for an extra day). I didn't sleep at all because my contractions were getting more intense. So once it was midnight, I woke PE up and told him that I thought we needed to go to the hospital. He told me to call my midwife to see what she thought. I tried calling her twice but just got her voicemail.

So we left for the hospital and arrived there at 12:51 am. They took me up to labor and delivery and hooked me up to the monitors. Based on my contraction pattern, I was in labor but when they checked me, I was still completely closed! But they let us stay at the hospital and gave me some medicine to space out the contractions since my contractions were right on top of each other. They also put me on oxygen for the baby's sake. The nurse kept calling my midwife, but couldn't reach her until 5 am. She told them to start me on pitocin at 8 am. So at 8 am I was measuring at a 2 and so they put me on pitocin. My midwife came in around 10:30 am. She checked me and I was at a 3.5, so she broke my water and kept me on pitocin. We ended up switching delivery rooms at this point in time so I could use the nice jacuzzi tub to help cope with the pain.

Well, they couldn't get the portable monitors to work so they ended up having to pull me out of the tub (but it wasn't really helping anyways). At this point in time they thought I still had ~6 hours left and I knew that I couldn't handle the pain for 6 more hours so I asked for an epidural. They got the epidural in pretty fast and it was a relief. Shortly after the doctors/nurses left the room, I felt like I needed to switch over to my right side. My nurse came in to help with that, but she decided to check me. She said that the baby's head was really low so she called my midwife in and she checked me and said that I was at completion. Suddenly we had a bunch of nurses in the room getting everything ready for the baby. If I had known how close I was, I probably wouldn't have gotten the epidural!

I pushed for somewhere between 5-10 contractions, and our baby boy entered the world at 12:46 pm! He came into the world screaming. They wiped him off and gave him to me to hold. They then did a wellness check on him and measured him. He was 8 lbs 12 oz and 21.5" long! Then I was able to breastfeed him, and PE and I were able to enjoy our little boy. About an hour later a nurse came in to see if I could get up and walk yet. But I still couldn't feel my legs at all. Turns out that they forgot to turn off the epidural! So we had to wait in the delivery room for a few more hours before I could feel my legs and walk.

We called our parents/siblings around 3 pm to tell them the good news. My dad didn't believe me when I told him he needed to come see his grandbaby. So we had visitors off and on for the next 2 days. It also took us the whole time we were at the hospital to decide on a name for our baby boy. But after seeing him and sleeping on several names, we finally decided on a good name for him.

 We love our baby boy very much and we are so grateful to have him in our family!

Chilean Independence Day Celebration

PE and I have been busy in the kitchen the last week! September 18th was Chilean Independence Day, and we celebrate every year by cooking yummy chilean food. This year we added a few new things, and planned on having lot's of people over on Friday and Saturday to enjoy the food with us. We didn't have as many people come as we had counted on, so we had plenty of leftovers.

Empanadas are a classic that we do every year. We make the classic beef empanadas and we do some cheese empanadas. They are a fair amount of work to make, but are definitely worth it!

We also make completos every year. They are a lot simpler to make. Fry a hot dog, put it in a good bun, add guacamole, tomatoes, mayo w/ lime, and hot sauce. Delicious!

This year we tried making a new dessert called "Torta de Mil Hojas," or a thousand-layer cake. Basically it's layers of pie-like crust stuck together with dulce de leche (basically caramel). Instead of making one big cake that is about 14 layers thick, we made smaller ones that were 4 layers thick. They took a fair amount of time to make, but they were yummy!

We had a few other dishes like repullo, ensalada de papas, and mote, but I didn't get any pictures of those. All in all, it was a very successful chilean day celebration!

Favorite Part

Favorite part of pregnancy: 

Being able to feel (with my hand) a little foot pressing against my belly.

Only a few layers of skin and muscle separate us, can't wait to meet this baby!

Ready for Baby?

I hit 35 weeks yesterday! And are we ready for the baby? Yes, and no...

PE and I are a pretty laid back couple. We have a TON of friends also expecting little ones, and most of them already have their nurseries set up, names picked out, etc. (And many are due months after us!!!) If you come to our apartment and want to see the nursery, we will show you our 2nd bedroom which looks nothing at all like a nursery. There's not even a crib in there yet! And do we have a name picked out? Or at least a small list of names we both like? Nope!

Well, good news is that I finally bought a crib! It will get here sometime in the next 2 weeks. Setting up a crib at week 37 isn't cutting it too close is it?  :)  We're actually not planning on using the crib at first, so it really doesn't matter.

So I think at first glance it doesn't seem like we are prepared at all. I know that we won't have the cutest nursery, but it will be functional. I know that eventually (probably at the hospital) we will finally pick a good name for our baby. Although PE thinks we should just wait until they are old enough to pick a name for themselves...

But I think we are ready in the ways that really matter. I think we have a strong, healthy marriage. I'm glad that we have had the past 4 years to build and strengthen our relationship, and I know that it is the right time for us to add children to our family.

We have no illusions that raising children will be easy. But we are ready for it. I like to say that we are ready to experience the rude awakening of parenthood.

And I hope I don't make it sound like we are dreading it, because we're not. We are really excited for this baby. I'm excited to be a mom, and to see PE be a dad. We just don't have any false illusions of how easy or perfect everything will be. It'll be hard and challenging, but PE and I are always up for a good challenge!

Tut, Tut, Looks Like Rain!

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law threw me a "Winnie the Pooh" baby shower on Saturday.

The food all had "Winnie the Pooh" tie-ins. I think the funniest one was that they called the ham "Piglet."

Sister-in-law and Mother-in-law

My roommate from college was able to come!

Beautiful quilt made by my grandma, the picture doesn't do it justice!

4 Generations! But is the 4th one also a girl???

My mom's side of the family

My dad's side of the family

My side of the family likes to take lots of pictures. PE's side of the family was also there, I promise!

Adorable Mickey Mouse quilt made by my college roommate!

Carseat from my mom, and cover from my Aunt. I feel like there should be a baby in there!!!

This baby is already quite spoiled! We received so much from family, thank you!!! 

A Growing Family...

Meet the 2 newest additions to our family!

Aren't they adorable?

They are super sweet, soft, friendly, curious, and of course adorable! Now if only they didn't poop so much...

Baby #1

We are excited to welcome Baby #1 into our family in October! We found out we were expecting exactly 4 years from the day PE proposed. In March, I went to my first doctor's appointment and I was able to see our baby for the first time. You can't tell much from the picture, but it was neat to see the little heart beating. Based on this ultrasound, my due date was set as October 16.

Baby at Week 9

In March, I also started experiencing the joys of "morning" sickness. About the time I started feeling sick I had to go to a national biological engineering conference in Indianapolis to present my research. The first time I threw up was actually in Indianapolis (fortunately it happened while I was in my hotel room and not while presenting my research). From about week 8 to week 15, I was pretty sick. PE was a saint and took good care of me. There were many days he would come home from a long day at work and find me lying on the couch, too sick to even think about dinner. So he would find or make something for dinner without any help from me. Towards the end of week 15 I started to feel a lot better. I still have some bad days, but it is more manageable now than it was during the first trimester.

PE and I decided that we would wait until people asked if I was pregnant before we told them (with the exception of a few people). My family finally guessed on Mother's Day that we were expecting. The thing that gave us away was the gigantic bruise I had on my arm from where the nurse took a blood sample for the 16 week screening tests. And Mother's Day was during week 18. It actually took 3 weeks for the bruise to disappear. We also told PE's family on Mother's Day since we didn't think it would be fair for one family to know way before the other family.

Yesterday we had our big ultrasound! It was fun to see how much development has occurred since the last ultrasound. We are going to have the gender be a surprise. I actually almost forgot to tell the ultrasound specialist that we didn't want to find out the gender. Good thing that the first thing that showed up on the ultrasound was the baby's face! The measurements from this ultrasound actually showed that I am 4 days further along, so the due date has been moved up to October 12.

Baby's Profile at Week 21

Baby's Foot at Week 21

So far, I would not consider pregnancy a "fun" experience. But we are very grateful and excited to welcome this little baby into our family in a few months!

Tulip Festival

On Friday, PE had the day off work, so we went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. It was nice to get out of the house and see the beautiful gardens!

General Conference

I'm a few weeks late in posting this, but I really enjoyed this session of General Conference. I especially loved the talks about family. I loved Elder Ballard's prophetic counsel that the strength of our society is a result of the strength of our families. If we really want to fix our societal problems, we need to first focus on fixing families. This year being an election year, there is of course a lot of  debate over the problems in America and who is the right president to fix them. But really, I believe that the power to "fix" our country is in the hands of mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children everywhere in America.

Thought for the Day

I read an article on KSL today that made me remember this talk from General Conference. I couldn't remember when it was, or who the speaker had been, but I had remembered the message. I did some searching on LDS.org and found the paragraph I had remembered.

"Yet sorrowfully, on occasion, some are willing to set aside the precious gospel truths restored by Joseph Smith because they get diverted on some historical issue or some scientific hypothesis not central to their exaltation, and in so doing they trade their spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage. They exchange the absolute certainty of the Restoration for a doubt, and in that process they fall into the trap of losing faith in the many things they do know because of a few things they do not know. There will always be some seemingly intellectual crisis looming on the horizon as long as faith is required and our minds are finite, but likewise there will always be the sure and solid doctrines of the Restoration to cling to, which will provide the rock foundation upon which our testimonies may be built."

-Elder Tad Callister, Oct. 2009 General Conference

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints because of the truths that I know, because of the sure and solid doctrines of the Restoration. I know that God lives, and the He is my Father. I know that Jesus Christ lives and is my Savior. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles are true prophets of God. I know that true happiness comes from obeying the commandments of God. But I also recognize that I do not know or understand everything. But I can't sacrifice the great truths that I do know for doubt about something that is not central to my exaltation.


My Grandma shared this scripture years ago at the funeral of my great-grandma, and I still remember it vividly. 

"Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend."

-Mosiah 4:9

We have to believe that God comprehends more than we do. We have to believe that we can't and won't understand everything in this life. But there are things we can understand and know in this life, and the rest is where faith comes in. Heavenly Father sees the big picture, and while I can't see all of it, I can see enough to know who He is which makes me willing to place my hand in His and let Him lead me.

One in Heart and in Name?

To our 2-year old nephew, PE and I are both the same person. He calls both of us by my name. Now my name may be easier for him to say, but he can actually say PE's name. The other day, he accidentally hit me with one of his toys and his grandparents told him to tell me sorry and give me a hug. He did say he was sorry and gave me a hug, but then he also said sorry to PE and gave him a hug. It was pretty funny.

While his mom and grandparents are trying to help him identify PE with the correct name, we actually find it flattering that our nephew considers us to be one person. Even at his young age, he knows that PE and I are a packaged deal. On the rare occasion when only one of us is there, our nephew will keep looking out the door or window waiting for the other to come in.

The bible teaches us that a husband and wife should cleave unto each other and become one flesh. We feel like we must be doing something right if even our nephew can't tell us apart. :)

Joy

I have been blessed with amazing friends in my life. Growing up, there were 4 girls who were (and still are) my core group of friends. We grew up together, experienced life together, and were always there for each other. We helped each other's testimonies grow as we experienced seminary and young women's together. Today, I was pondering how (come May), all 5 of us will have been married in the temple, sealed to a loving husband for time and all eternity. As I pondered this, a feeling of great joy flooded over me. While I have found joy in our friendships before, knowing that we will all have celestial marriages brought me indescribable joy. We will have all made the covenants needed to return to our Father in Heaven. And I know that we will continue to help each other live worthy of those covenants.

There is a quiet joy that comes from seeing friends and family in the temple.When my little sister went through the temple, it was wonderful to see my parents, grandparents, and cousins there. Just before she left on her mission, I went to the temple with her and my parents. While we were there, I saw and talked to one of my young women leaders and one of my orchestra teachers. I can't really explain it, but it felt so good to see them in the temple. It's a feeling I have only ever felt at the temple. There is joy in seeing others in the temple, knowing that you are each living temple worthy lives.

Last Wednesday, we dropped my little sister off at the MTC. She will be serving the people in the the Anchorage, Alaska mission. There were tears shed as my family dropped her off, knowing we won't see her again for 18 months. As I have been thinking about her in the MTC this week, I have been filled with joy. Joy in knowing my little sister is sacrificing 18 months of her life to serve the Lord. Joy in seeing what a wonderful example she is to my family.

I am grateful for my family and friends. I am especially grateful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and that we have temples again upon the earth where we can be sealed to our loved ones forever.

Proactiv

Right now I am extremely annoyed at Proactiv. Now, it has been about 5 years since I have used their products. I stopped using them because they didn't work for me, and they were expensive. Honestly, I have found that washing my face with Dove unscented soap works so much better than any acne product. And it's a lot cheaper.

So why am I annoyed with them? Because for some reason my Proactiv account was reactivated after 5 years of inactivity. And they sent me products I didn't order, and of course charged me for them. And it was set up to keep sending me products every three months. Well, the credit card they charged it on is linked to an old checking account that I still have, but seldom use. A week ago, I was checking my bank accounts, and I felt prompted to check that old account (which I rarely check). I opened up the account summary and saw that I had been charged $50 by Proactiv that very day. It was still pending activity, so I quickly called Proactiv to try and fix it. But unfortunately, Proactiv had already shipped the products and could not refund my money until I returned their products. I asked why my account had been reactivated, and they had no idea. I asked them to close my account so that this would never happen again, which they agreed to do.

Well, I finally got my Proactiv in the mail today, so I took it back to the post office and had to pay $8 to ship it back to Proactiv. So it will probably be another couple weeks before I actually get refunded my $50, and I am also out $8 for returning a product I never ordered.

Proactiv wants your money, and they have set up a "convenient" automatic delivery system to make sure they can continue to take your money. I logged into my account before I called Proactiv, and I found that I could not stop the automatic delivery. The only way to get out of the system was to call customer service and close my account. And when I called to close my account, the lady asked me if I was interested in buying a new product. Why do you think I'm closing my account??? Seriously people.

And the other thing that really bugs me...how in the world did they get my current address??? The Proactiv was delivered to my apartment door. We have lived here for less than a year, and I have had no contact with Proactiv for 5 years...

So while I am frustrated with Proactiv, I am grateful for a Father in Heaven who is looking out for me and gave me a prompting to check my bank account that specific day.