Happy Birthday, Baby Boy!

It isn't often that you can remember EXACTLY what you were doing a year ago today. A year ago last night I was whining to my husband. I just could NOT handle one more night of being a large, pregnant woman. My due date had come and gone 5 days before. I still showed no signs of progressing towards labor. Although I had never met anyone who was pregnant for 10 or more months, a dark, foreboding thought entered my mind: what if this baby never came and I was doomed to an eternity of heartbearn, hemorroids, and uh-hmm, hell? These thoughts swirled through my mind as I tossed around in bed. I downed about 10 or so TUMS (a nightly ritual) and finally fell asleep. At about 1:00 AM, I was awoken by a strong urge to pee. I jumped (as best as a pregnant person can) out of bed and ran to the bathroom. As I loitered back into bed, I took note of the time, and thought maybe I had eaten something bad because my stomach hurt. About 7 or 8 minutes later, I felt like I needed to pee again. I ran back to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet--no pee, but I did notice my stomach was very hard and felt ache-y. At this moment I hopefully asked myself if this could be a contraction? (the twins were taken via c-section and I never went into labor with them) "No,"--I dismissed the thought when I remembered my doctor laughing at me, "you'll KNOW when you have a contraction."

Again I headed back to bed and was sitting there pondering my situation, when all of a sudden I sat up and realized I had wet my pants! How embarrasing!-- wait, had my water broken? I ran to the bathroom for the third time in the last half hour, sat down, and was elated to discover that no, I had not wet my pants, but my water had broken. Hallelujah! My rejoicing quickly turned sour when I walked into the bedroom to tell D and was overcome with pain. I jumped into bed and winced as I woke him up. We called my mom (I am sure she was SOOO happy to get that call at 1:30 AM). She said she would get dressed and drive on up (she lives in Alpine, about 35 minutes away). We gathered up 'the bag' and then, the contractions really started coming every seven or eight minutes. I decided that we better go right away so we called mom and she said she was on the road--about 5 minutes from the house. We felt comfortable leaving the slumbering twins (at that point I didn't care, I just wanted to get to the hospital and HAVE THAT BABY, I've heard my fair share of 'babies born in the car on the way to the hospital' stories). It was gently snowing and we felt really strange driving on the deserted roads, in the dead of night, in the middle of SLC.

Well, the rest is history. After an 1 hour and 1/2 of pushing, Roger finally arrived at 11:57 A.M., weighing 7 lbs, 5 ounces. My favorite part of the experience was getting to hold Rogie just seconds after he was born. It was truly worth waiting for instead of going with the scheduled c-section (every hour after my due date passed I wondered if I was crazy for waiting instead going under the knife). I missed the bonding after the twins' arrival because they were wisked away to the nursery for observation and a bit of oxygen. I didn't actually get to hold them until about 2 or 3 hours after they were born!

My favorite part about newborn baby Roger was his hair. He was born with a full head of chestnut brown hair-- it never fell out, just turned blonde (he's had dozens of haircuts this year!) His full head of hair is STILL the thing that most strangers comment on.

I am so glad that Roger is a part of my life. He's brought us joy, fun, and lots of dirty diapers..

ode to D and his strange kind

Poll: who does Roger look more like?

Davis, 10 months

Eliza, 11 months

Roger, 11 months

mind your manners, please!

I have a bad habit of picking food out of the serving bowls "after" everyone has dished up. For some reason, it feels like if I don't put seconds on my plate, the calories won't count (I will keep dreaming). Don't believe me? Ask my family who keep trying to tell me to just dish up if I am still hungry. I usually laugh at them and say it is just one of those things you just love to hate about me.

Last Saturday at dinner I was conversing with the family when Eliza said, "Mom, stop that! You are being disrespectful." I looked down and realized I was picking up kernels of corn one at a time and stuffing them into my mouth.

What a wake up call-- being taught manners by a 4-year-old.

why boneless is best

As I was watching D very artfully cut up his ribs at dinner, he stopped for a moment and said, "You, know, I don't like eating meat off the bone. I operate enough as it is."

Thanks for the tip.

Duh!

We recently redid our kitchen and got some spankin' new appliances. The thing that I was most excited about was the new microwave/microhood. It has a "sixth sense." This means it can sense the steam coming off food and lengthen or shorten cooking times until your dish is perfectly thawed or cooked or softened (Whirlpool has some extremely cool engineers on its payroll). It was icing on the cake for me to be able to FINALLY get rid of the microwave sitting on the countertop and free up some more space for chopping, drying, or in my case, piles. The old microwave we were using was purchased by D prior to his freshman year of college, was like 50 watts, and had seen better days. Needless to say, I didn't mind selling it at the garage sale we had last spring for, oh, 10 dollars or so (I thought I came out on the better end of the bargain).

Last night as I put in some frozen corn in my glorious new microwave, I got an error code after I typed in the "sixth-sense" cooking function. Odd. So I tried again with the same outcome. What!?! My glorious microwave was letting me down. I reluctantly set the microwave to cook for 5 minutes and resigned myself to the fact the corn might not be perfectly done. To add insult to injury, when my 5 minutes were up the corn was still frozen. The microwave was letting me down. It seemed like a personal attack. How dare the microwave throw a temper-tantrum like this! As I grumbled around the kitchen, D reminisced that the old microwave, despite its 12 year age and 40 dollar pricetag had never let us down like this.

I nervously called the Whirlpool dudes this afternoon to get some help. After waiting on the phone for 20 minutes, I was finally connected to a representative. After I double-checked my name, address, and model number, I started my dissatisfied rant about the microwave not cooking. The representative patiently waited till I was done complaining and asked me if I had flipped the circuit breaker on or off. "No, I haven't tried that," I said and promptly went to the breaker box and flipped the kitchen switch. . . . .CRAP, my phone was connected to the same breaker and I hung up on the lady. Duh, could you be more dense? I called Whirlpool back up, and while I was on hold did the only smart thing of the day. I tried to heat up a cup of water. Wouldn't you know it? The rebooting seemed to work. My water was boiling in 1 minute 20 seconds.

The moral of the story is: think before you flip, and sometimes you are really lucky when you don't deserve to be.

my birthday. . . .

I just turned 29. My dad asked me if I felt old and I said, “no, not yet.” Many of my friends turned 30-something recently, so I’ll reserve the “feeling-old” bug for next year when my age begins with 3 rather than 2.

That being said, I’d like to reminisce about the years when my age began with a 1—my youth, so to speak. The first thing that comes to mind regarding teenager-hood is “I am glad that is over!”

On second-thought, there were some really good things I would take back, given the chance:
1) Driving the car with my own license for the first time. I’ve never felt quite so grown up as I did after hopping into the van on my way home from the DMV with mom in the passenger seat. That feeling quickly changed to embarrassment when I drove over a railroad track on my way home and popped the tire of the van (I am not kidding, this happened). I remember walking to the gas station with mom (this was before the age of cell phones) and calling dad to come rescue us (on a side note—why didn’t my mother know how to change a flat?). I remember dad asking me how in the world I managed to pop the tire on a train track. To this day I don’t know how that happened, but will always remember it as a huge ego-buster!
2) Having a female best friend. Maren, I love, love, love you! Not that being married isn’t great, but there is something special about having a female friend you can shop with, eat lunch with, study with, and hang out with. I admired her so much and still do—even though we don’t talk near as much as we should.
3) First crush, first kiss. Need I say more?
4) Getting my first job. I was a food demonstrator in a grocery store—I was so proud to tell my dad that I had landed a job myself. Looking back, this was probably one of the best jobs I had—I got to give out FREE samples to people. They liked me, and it’s not like I could do it wrong!! The downside was standing in the same spot for many hours.

5) Getting an acceptance letter to college. Even though I knew my stats were good enough to get in, there was a great relief opening that letter and realizing I had accomplished something really great

6) Gaining a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I will be forever grateful to seminary teachers, Young Women leaders, my parents, and my friend’s parents for giving me experiences where I felt the Holy Ghost. Thank you for your service!

S.O.S. . . .I have a sock problem

I just found 7 (not kidding) children's socks in the bathroom and 4 in the living room-- a few matches, but mostly singletons. I haven't checked downstairs, but I am sure there is also a pile there. My kids take off their socks every time we walk in the house. Then, they put on a new pair when we are headed out later. Again, it is another pair at bedtime ("mom, I don't want cold feet in my sleep!-- "ew, those ones are dirty!"). I used to throw the socks in a laundry bin when I found them, but then I couldn't wash the clothes fast enough to have clean ones. Now they are left littering the house. It has gotten so bad, that the kids have now started wearing "rainbow socks" (dubbed by Davis). Rainbow socks are unmatched socks. The kids will just pick up a sock whereever they find it and put it on when I am shouting for them to get some shoes and socks on so we can walk out the door. The twins have also started hiding socks behind couches or corners when I ask them to please take their socks back to their room. To top things off, Eliza has started raiding ROGER'S sock drawer when she can't find any of her own (isn't it really unnatural that she can actually fit into them?). I literally can't keep up with this mess!! Any thoughts, suggestions, or otherwise? I am drowning in socks here!

Why we all wanted a Twin

During my freshman year at BYU, I lived in the dorms. There were two apartment of girls per apartment of boys in our ward, and it was probably just a month that each male apartment had its label: the geeks, the slackers, the pretty-boys, the athletes, the cool guys. You get it. I am sure that the ladies' apartments had their labels as well.

Anyway, there was one beautiful boy that I quickly had a crush on-- his name was Steve (thankfully for D I don't remember his last name). Of course, it was his roomate that asked me out (the subject of another post-- why was it that "the best friend" asked me out all the time instead of the one I had interest for?), but my eyes were only for Steve. Soon after I had "hung out" with their apartment I learned that Steve had a twin sister. She was always at their place; laughing and hanging out with they guys--she was practically one of them. I was infinitely jealous, of course, because she was also the long-haired, looks-good-in-pajamas blonde.

Anyway, when I saw this picture it reminded me of my freshman year crush. Doesn't Eliza have it made, surrounded by all of the boys? I am green with envy for all those great girls in the future that will have to contend with her!

the text pager-- a great invention

This week has been pretty busy, and D and I really haven't talked much. We were happy to visit the temple together last night (and by together, I mean we met in the chapel beforehand and talked to each other via cell phones on the way home). When we got home we still had a lot to say. Actually, D had A LOT of stories to share, and I told him that Roger pooped 3 times. We call these gossipy nights 'sleepover nights' because we feel like we are 13-year-old girls who are so excited to be together they don't want to go to sleep. Inevitably, we both pay for these late nights the day after. Unfortunately D is on call tonight and will be getting even less sleep tonight!

I soooo love the fact that my husband is chatty. I feel like I know the people he works with and the things that are going on at the hospital. I was reflecting about this today and text-paged D to tell him thank you for the chatties. While i zipped to the computer and drafted a quick message, I also realized text-pagers are cool! I love being able to send a message to my husband and know that he'll get it even if he is in the middle of something else. I am so glad to be living in the information age. It would have totally stunk to be a pioneer who had to walk a mile out in the fields to tell her husband that the baby just took his first steps.

That is all I have to say tonight. I am now going to watch the news. D told me he worked on some stabbing victims today-- I am sure that story will pop up.