What a beautiful baby Gabe is!! He's two weeks old already, and he must just know that he's the 4th child and that he needs to be easy-going. He has been an angel!! He wakes up to eat about every 3-4 hours, which if I time it just right means that I feed him at about 11pm, he wakes up around 3, and then not again until 7ish when the boys are getting up and I would be up anyways!!! That really only counts as one feeding in the night!! If I don't time it right, I've got to get up twice, which is still amazing, right?!
My labor with him was terrible and wonderful at the same time. I'm not sure which feeling outweighs the other quite yet. I was Strep-B positive with this pregnancy, again, and I wanted to be in more control of how my hospital experience went after the treacherous experience we had with Will. So, at my appointment that morning, my midwife Jennifer stripped my membranes at about 11am to see if that would get things going. It did, and about a half an hour later I was having some good contractions every few minutes. I didn't want to go rushing back to the hospital if they were just going to stop, but I didn't want to go in too late to get the 4 hours of Penicillin they wanted me to have either. I decided to come back home (Jared and I went to lunch after the appointment) and at least pack my own hospital bag and see if they kept going or not.
I came home, packed my bag, got Evan to school, arranged for everybody to be taken care of after school, and went back to the hospital. We got checked in and all hooked up to the monitors, and got the Penicillin going at about 2:15. We watched a movie while we waited, and the contractions kept coming nice and steady the whole time.
This ended up being my longest labor as far as total time goes, but from the very beginning until she broke my water at 6pm, so 7 whole hours, whenever I was distracted I could hardly tell they were there. As a matter of fact, while we were watching the movie, I kept on looking over at the monitor to make sure I was still having them, and sure enough I was, but they were pretty dang mild!!
After she broke my water, things really picked up from there, and pretty soon after that I was really breathing through my contractions and focusing and getting back rubs and all that fun stuff. Every so often, they would kick up a notch, and I would hope it was almost over. I progressed quickly, as far as birthing a baby is concerned, but it sure didn't seem very fast while I was in the middle of it!!
Its hard to describe the pain that I felt, but at the same time this finally turned out to be the kind of birthing experience with Jared that I'd always wanted to have. The 2 times I had an epidural, he was there of course, but I didn't really NEED him. With Will, there was so much distraction going on through Active Labor, waking up, taking a while to decide this was for real, waking up Jared, packing a bag, calling my mom, waiting for her, driving to the hospital, getting inside, getting checked in and checked on, peeing in a cup, etc etc etc that it all seemed to go by a lot faster with him. With this delivery, sitting in the same room anticipating the next contraction, and then just getting through each one made it seem harder. But I really relied on Jared and he was an amazing support to me and I really don't know if I could have done this one without him. For him, this was his favorite birth because he finally really did feel a part of it. It was an intense and personal experience for the two of us, and that part of it I actually really loved.
At 8:40pm I was finally complete, I pushed for about 4-5 minutes and out he came!!! Oh, I would rather push than go through those last 20 minutes of transition again!!!! Pushing is hard work, but for me the pain of the contractions went away and it was super intense, but not so painful. Is that weird? Oh well. . .
Anyhow, we had warned the nurses that he would probably be grunty with his breathing, like ALL of our children have been. . .and he was. So, a NICU nurse came in to monitor him for a while, but like we told them he would be, he was fine, just like all his brothers were. Since I had been Strep-B positive, and after our experience with Will, I knew that even with the Penicillin they would be on a bit of a higher alert in monitoring him than normal, so I didn't let the nurses take him from me at all. I made sure that he stayed right on my chest and made them do all of their listening and watching from there. It was so much better than letting them take him after a few minutes over to that warming table. It was easy, and such a better experience. With my previous births, I just thought thats how things were done so I let them do it. I had to learn that this really was MY experience, and that they were all there to serve me and my needs, and not the other way around. What a better hospital experience!!! They don't get offended by my demands, I just didn't know any better before!! I will be pounding this knowledge into my sisters heads when they get pregnant with their first babies!!!!
The boys love him, and will sit and hold him for 20-30 minutes at a time. Will is having a bit of a time adjusting, but I think things are starting to settle in for him too. He just loves babies so much, but he has been very possessive of me lately, even before the baby was born. If Cohen or Evan needed a hug, he would get mad and try to push them off of my lap screaming "Thats my mom!!! Get off!!" Ha! So, he does a bit of the same thing with the baby. When I'm nursing Gabe he'll either want to hold the baby, or hold me. He'll say things like "He doesn't like you mom! Get him off!!" or demand that its his turn to hold him. Sometimes its cute, and sometimes I want to punch him, but we're getting it worked out!!
So, Will loves babies, and he's also very possessive of me. I'm interested to see how he handles a new baby in the house. If Cohen or Evan need or WANT a hug and kiss from me, if he sees it, he runs over and starts shoving and pushing them off of me and yelling "MY MOM!!! Thats MY MOM!" Its 1/2 cute and 1/2 annoying, but usually pretty funny, and something I want to remember. :) Oh, my babies. . .
We took Cohen and Evan to a BYU game a few weeks ago and had a great time! They got a bit bored by the very end, but did pretty well overall. Jared gets $5 tickets to a few select games over the season for being a church employee, so we're taking advantage of the deal and going again tomorrow! It is the first 'blackout' game, and also homecoming, so it should be a lot of fun. Maybe my water will break. . .a girl can dream, can't she?
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| Here's my dad teaching Cohen what he needs to know about football :) |
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| There's my pregnant belly. Thats all you're gonna get. |
So, I'm so far behind, and so about to give birth, that today I'm going to attempt to load some photos, and to label them, and thats about it. But its been on my to-do list for 6ish months, so here we go!!
Jareds ENTIRE side of the family came to visit for a week this summer, and everybody stayed. . .at our house!!! We are so blessed to have this home where everybody can stay. We didn't even feel smooshed, I don't think!! Things really got started on Saturday July 14th up in Logan with an extended Family Get Together. Jared got the ball rolling, and then some aunts helped with the details, but everybody was so happy to see each other after so long, and agreed to not wait so long before getting together again.
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| The whole family!! |
This first picture is of all of Jareds 1st cousins. They haven't seen each other in a long time, but all have great memories from their growing up years. I don't know who all these people are, and Jared probably won't ever get on here and label this photo. . .but here it is!
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| Cohen and Kennedy...and my feet...I was so tired that day!!! |
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| Some of the cousins (2nd cousins really) are very creative little girls and decided to create a play for us. I think it was a talent competition like X factor or something. Cohen wanted to be in it and they let him be the Onrey English Judge or something. |
 Here's the house that Jareds dad grew up in. It is directly across the street from the Logan temple. In fact, here is the view from the front yard. . . |
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| Pretty stunning, right? |
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| Jared has so many wonderful memories of Logan and of his grandparents home there. Here's Oma pushing the boys on the swing in the front yard. |
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| Jareds cousin owns the house now, so we weren't trespassing or anything! |
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| Here's Cohen and Evan looking at their Great-Grandparents grave. Cohen is middle-named after this grandpa, Jay. |
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| Evan |
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| Will |
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| Ryan |
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| We drove up the canyon a bit and saw a place where papa liked to go fishing as a kid, and in college. |
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| Here's all the grandkids dressed up for church on Sunday. It looks like we're missing Ryan. . .but the back row has Evean, Camden, Cohen and Kennedy holding Colston, and the front row is Will, Easton, Addie and Sophie. |
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| We caught a huge snake in our front yard on Sunday... We haven't seen one like this around before or after, thank goodness, but it was quite entertaining! |
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| Here's everybody checkin' out the snake!! |
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| Here's the kids acting out the story of Lehi and his vision of the Tree of Life. . .it didn't go as smooth as I had planned, but it was still cute. Nobody wanted to do any of the 'bad guy' parts, and as soon as another part was introduced, those who already had a part wanted to switch. . .whatever. . .it was cute |
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| Here are our 'flags' from the Family Olympics. |
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| In this game, you had to throw marshmallows into a bucket on your teammates head, and whichever team got the most was the winner. |
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| Here's Papa showing off his injury from the 'Pop on Pop' game!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!! We bought an enormous water-balloon-launcher and you got to try and hit your dad from across the yard. He's the only one who actually got hit, and it was pretty brutal!!!! |
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Bad picture, but this is Jared and John gutting the fish they caught up at Silver Lake on Tuesday night. Fishing with Papa. . .I hope my kids actually remember this kind of thing!!
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| 'The Sleepover'. . .this is good for cousins, right? And yes, Cohen and Evans room is still purple. I swore it would be the first room I painted when we moved in. . .well, we've gotten the entire upstairs done so back off!! We at least bought some paint for it. Now I've just got to squeeze in the painting, right in between squeezing out a new baby and all of the holidays! Ha! |
Cohen and Evan are finally on their first official soccer team!!! Yay!!! They are The Lions, and they love learning how to play, and especially playing real games against another team. Evan is crazy about it! He asks me every day how much longer until they get to 'verse' another team. And he's a quick little player too. I don't know, he just may end up being the soccer star in our family!!
So, I know I'm a little late. Sue me. But this was too cute to not post. And of course I've lost the cutest part. I know I didn't throw it away, so when I find it, I'll take a picture and insert it in the right place.
Cohen learned all about Leprechauns at school the day before St. Patty's Day (it was on a Saturday this year) because while they were out of their classroom, a sneaky little Leprechaun snuck into their classroom and tipped all of their chairs over!!! Mrs. Holbrook (the best kindergarten teacher ever) told them they could build a trap and try to catch one over night.
He built a little trap out of a #10 can, and a little ladder, and put all of his plastic gold money in the bottom to lure the Leprechaun inside. He figured that since the ladder was on the outside, once the little guy got in there, he wouldn't be able to get out.
What do you know?! That sneaky little Leprechaun took all of his gold and left him this note (just the shamrock part):
So, here's where I've failed. Cohen decided to write a note back to that sneaky fast leprechaun and see if he wanted to be his friend. The note was so cute, all in kindergarten handwriting and spelling, and I've completely lost it!! AAAHHHH!!! Anyhow, Cohens note said:
It was Cohens turn to be the VIP in class the next week, and he wanted to put his notes on the poster he got to decorate, thats why they are glued on to a poster!!
OK, so since my husband is such an amazing photographer, I know that I will NEVER pay for school pictures. Until now I was thinking that it would just save me a lot of money. . .never did I imagine the hideous nature of the picture that would be sent home. They have this ridiculous system that you have to pre-pay for the class photo (which I did), but you post-pay for the individual photos. . .I think it probably hurts them in the end, because honestly, who is going to pay for this crap after they see it? You can 'opt-out' of the individual photo beforehand, or if you don't they'll just send home the whole package to you and you return the pictures that you don't want to buy. Now, I was curious to see what their pictures would look like, so even though I knew I wouldn't be buying, I didn't opt-out either.
Boy am I ever glad I got to see these beauties!!! I have a million things I could say about it, and yet, I am speechless!! Here. . .take a look-see for yourself. . .
And they want $15 for the first sheet!!!!! You can get all 5 for a mere $35!!!!! What a deal!!!
Needless to say, I will allow my children to have their individual photos taken from now on for a few reasons. . .so I can be reminded of what an amazing photographer their dad is, and so I can be thankful I have boat-loads of actually beautiful photos of my children. . .and so we can all have a good laugh!!
So, we have a lot of those awesome spider-infested bushes in our backyard. Since we don't own our own garden (did I never tell that story, remind me to one day) we decided to rip out the hideous bushes and build a terraced-garden. I'm really excited for it, but since I have no energy lately, I really don't have the motivation to finish it. . .besides the fact that the wonderful neighbor who does own our garden has been really understanding about the 'mis-understanding', and has offered to let us use a portion of that garden this summer, which will be sufficient for my gardening needs. Needless to say, here is yet another project that we've started, but that we probably won't finish until next year!
Jared got curious about how to get rid of our spider-bushes, and read up on a few different methods online, one of which included just chopping them all down with your big trimmers, and then renting a root-grinder and grinding out all of the roots. Another suggestion sounded a lot more fun, and A LOT less time consuming, so we tried it and it was AWESOME!!! We had this whole section done in 1 hour!!! Here's the process. . .in case you ever want to get rid of your own spider-infested bushes. . .
