My Husband Always Tries to Read My Posts Before I'm Finished.

A few weeks ago, I told Travis that my birthday gift this year would be the trip we're taking to Hattiesburg. I figured, it costs money to board the dogs, drive to Mississippi, and I plan on eating at all my favorite restaurants from my good ol' college days... so why spend money on a gift? Besides, I couldn't think of anything I wanted. But then, as the days went by, my trusty macbook started acting up. And by "acting up" I really mean "dying." It froze all. the. time. For the last year or so, I haven't been able to do a whole lot of multitasking because it was just too much for the old guy to handle. (old guy: macbook) I was able to deal with limiting my multitasking, but restarting my computer multiple times a day (restarting took a good 30 to 45 minutes each time) was pushing me over the edge. I frantically searched for my external hard drive to back up my computer (something I hadn't done in over a year!) and barely got everything backed up. I started backtracking my "I don't need a birthday gift" stance yesterday and asked Travis if there was any chance I could get a new laptop. I made every case I could... and he didn't say a whole lot (which really isn't all that unusual). About the third time my computer froze up in a thirty minute period, Travis left the room and returned a few minutes later with a beautiful new Macbook Pro. I cried. He wanted to wait till my birthday, but the old guy gave out a week too soon. And in the end, it was an even bigger surprise. So I'm now writing my first blogpost on my brand new laptop. It's just so wonderful. And you know what else? My old laptop won't come back on. I got one last backup last night... and then he died. Travis has tried to revive him, but I think it's a lost cause. He held on till he knew I was taken care of. ;) He was a good laptop. So thoughtful.

Also, yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my positive pregnancy test. Apparently September 27th is a big day for me.

Logan no longer sleeps through the night. (I can't remember if he'd given that up when I last wrote...) However, we officially moved him to his own room, because I found that he was spending more time in my bed than his pack n' play. (And technically he's only supposed to use the bassinet portion of the pack n' play till he's 15 pounds... he's almost 17 pounds. Oops.) I was just too tired in the night to stay awake, so I kept falling asleep while he nursed back to sleep... and neither of us was getting the good, restful sleep we really need. I'm slowly figuring out this whole "baby sleep" thing. He naps a lot. He takes a nap somewhere between forty-five minutes and an hour and a half after he wakes up. After every nap. So by the end of the day he's taken about five naps. Or six. But he's a happier baby and he sleeps better at night. (One or two wake-ups instead of four or five.) I learned last night that Travis isn't allowed to help with nighttime wake-ups. He tried last night, but caved in when the little guy smiled at him. He smiled back! So of course, Logan thought it would be fun to stay up for a little while. It may be mean of me, but when Logan wakes up in the night, he gets fed and then goes back to sleep. I can barely open my eyes in the middle of the night, so smiling at him is less of a concern for me. Hah. Sometime during his nice long sleep last night, he figured out how to put his butt in the air and kind of get onto his knees to scoot forward. He can't move much at all, but it's a pretty impressive attempt. He's really trying to figure out how to become mobile. He doesn't like staying in one place. However, he's only [almost] four months old, so he's got some time. Though I do think our aspirations of an immobile baby on our international flights is far-fetched now. I think we'll be up and down the aisles a lot.

We have a new area rug in our living room. The dogs love it even more than I do. Hah. We've used our TV a few times...it's pretty small and hard to see. Maybe someday we'll upgrade. We ran out of rice. We went through ten kilos of rice really fast. It's the Asian in us. Travis doubled the chocolate chip cookie recipe (it's the absolute best ever!), so now we have a ton of frozen cookie dough balls in the freezer. And Magnums. They were on sale. And I need to get some sleep before my little one wakes up for his first (and hopefully only) middle of the night feeding.

Slow Motion vs. Fast Motion (...and Logan, of course)

In the last week or so, I've been paying more attention to which scenarios cause Travis and me to disagree or argue more often. You see, I felt problems were arising more often and I couldn't figure out why. As it turns out, there's one common factor to nearly every argument we've had in the last... probably since we got married. It only took me three years to figure it out. You see, I move in fast-motion a lot of the time. When I get hungry, I want food. right. now. And if I'm say, nursing or otherwise busy with my dear child, I might ask Travis to get me some food. If I ask him to get me some food and he says yes, it's as if I have an internal timer that, quite honestly, is not very long. So half an hour later, when my stomach sounds beyond angry, I express that anger towards Travis. After all, he did say that he'd get me some food. Travis's perspective, I've come to find out, is very different. When he agrees to get me some food, he never thinks it's an immediate agreement. He said he'd do it... he didn't say he'd do it now. Our new compromise is that if I ask for food, I have a very short wait period before the hunger takes over my mind... so if he can't or doesn't want to help right then, he needs to say "when I finish ___" or "I will in ___ minutes"... then I have a better idea when my food is coming. OR I can decide that he's going to take too long and I need to master the art of nursing standing up with one hand while making a sandwich with the other. ;) Or just learn to be more patient. It's all about compromise. My second example of "fast motion" is while shopping. I'm not a "let's go shopping for a few hours 'cause it's so much fun" kind of person. I know what I'm going to buy when I go out, and I want to buy it and go home. (I literally feel exhausted as soon as we've found the item I sought out to buy.) I'm a bit more flexible on this when we're at Target and I wander into the baby section... but grocery shopping. Blah. Travis, on the other hand, wants to compare prices for every item we need or just stroll along at a leisurely (ahem, slow) pace, while I feel as though we're tiptoeing through our mundane grocery shopping. Travis is basically the most laid-back person in the world. I mean, I was in full blown labor and he decided to take a shower. If a man isn't going to get into gear and move at a high speed when his wife is screaming in pain, I don't know that there's anything that will. So we're working on compromising our "fast motion" and "slow motion" personalities into a... medium motion. We'll see how it goes.

Logan giggles now. Not often. But when he does, it's the best thing ever. I'm sure in a few years, we'll go back through all our videos of Logan and wonder why we thought him lying on his back "cooing" for ten minutes was so exciting... but today, right now, it's wonderful. If his noisiness at 3.5 months is any indication of talkativeness later in life, he's going to talk our ears off. He's rarely quiet. It's pretty cute though. (Except when he's beyond exhausted and has decided that the best way to stay awake is to yell. Not cry or scream. Yell.) My poor little guy has a cold and isn't a big fan of the snot-sucker. It works really well... if he'll let us use it! He loves his door jumper and is determined to sit up all. the. time. Or pull himself to his feet (while holding our hands, of course). And the only things that work in getting him to nap now are the car seat (both in the car and out... though out of the car takes longer) and the ergo carrier (magic!). He used to fall asleep on his own in his cozy little swing. But then one day he decided swings aren't cool and pacifiers are gross, so we were back at square one. I'm pretty sure his preferences change daily.

I'm back to babysitting now. I watch a three year old boy, a seven month old girl, and my little guy. It's quite a party! A week ago Logan would fall asleep when the seven month old cried... now he stares around the room in utter confusion.... or joins in himself. The three year old says things so practically. He went to the Baylor football game a couple weeks ago. I asked him, "Did they run really far?" He answered, "No, they runned close together." He has a point. And while he was playing with his legos the other day, I asked him what he was building. He said, "A mistake." "What's a mistake?" I asked. He said, "I don't know, but Daddy knows." :) I'm guessing his dad was building something with the legos and said, "I made a mistake!" and now it's an official thing to build. It's fun! It's better on the days that the babies are calm and easy. Once Logan can sit up without help, that will be one less thing I have to do--support him while he insists on sitting.

In other news... we're going to Hattiesburg, MS (where I went to college) next month. I'm very excited. We have our tickets to Indonesia for December, the dog boarding is already paid for, and we have a used car seat to take along just in case it gets damaged. And our passport applications (Logan's and mine) have been sent off. Exciting things are happening. Life is good. God's blessings are the best.

Quite the Smitten Kitten

It might seem crazy, but today is my official first day of being at home with the baby and the dogs all by myself for (essentially) the rest of the day. I had two and a half months of guests helping me with cooking and cleaning and diaper changes and grocery shopping... but now it's all come to an end. It's just me and the little guy (and the dogs, of course). And, as luck would have it, it rained yesterday. Hard. And as much as we needed the rain, somewhere between having a baby, moving into our newly purchased home, fixing a myriad of things in said newly purchased home, and all sorts of other distractions, the grass in our backyard died. We bought sprinklers in hopes that it wasn't completely dead... but it is. Not all of it. Just most of it. And do you know what that means? It means that when it rains, our backyard becomes quite muddy. Very muddy. So muddy, in fact, that even after an entire day of 95+ degree heat, it's still a bit squishy out there. At our old house we just let the dogs out in the front yard when it was muddy in the back. But see, our old neighborhood didn't mind that we let our dogs off leash in the yard (they have e-collars on if they're off-leash...), but we did it one day here and some very welcoming neighbor called the cops on us. It's apparently not the way of this neighborhood to talk to you personally, they just call the cops. So we had a nice visit with a police officer about a week after moving in about our dogs not being allowed off leash (and that my sister's car was parked on the street facing the wrong direction...a law that everyone but us was aware of), so taking them to the front is no longer an option. (I can't hold a baby AND two dog leashes. I can't even put the baby in a carrier and hold two dog leashes. OK, let's be honest. I can't hold two dog leashes. The dogs are ridiculously strong.) So when they need to relieve themselves, I have to let them out back where their paws get muddy and then the floors (the freshly cleaned floors, I might add) also get muddy. And when I try to wipe off Sabre's paws, he's totally fine with me wiping his back paws, but he's apparently injured his front paw(s) and won't let me touch them. Pretty sure he cracked/broke another nail. Anyway, my point is, I get to go through my first solo day with Logan while also cleaning the floors every time the dogs need to go out AND the dogs can't go outside to play. It can only get better from here, right?

I never realized how exciting a baby could be. I remember seeing other moms post "baby achievements" on Facebook, and I never really understood them. I didn't know when babies were supposed to reach certain milestones, so I didn't understand the excitement if they got there early or even if they got there late. But now I get it. I got way too excited about Logan going from his tummy to his side--even though it only lasted for a second! Travis and I both spent way too long watching Logan "play" with the toys hanging over this bouncy seat. He whacks them and smiles at them and even "talks" to them. It's just so adorable. Hah! I love buying baby clothes (and thankfully I've been able to find some great deals at consignment shops, otherwise we'd be in trouble!). I also find myself looking at all the baby toys and trying to convince Travis we need to buy them, even though we have plenty of hand-me-down toys that he's yet to show interest in. Sigh.

I desperately want to buy an area rug for our living room. Who knew area rugs (soft, semi-nice ones) could be so expensive? Even the cheap, scratchy rugs are still $50 or so. I finally convinced Travis to buy a new vacuum and a doggie door, so I'm trying to be patient about the area rug. "Trying" being the operative word there.

And now for the "I-tried-not-to-do-it-but-I-can't-resist" list of Logan-quirks:
-He loves baths so much that he screams when we take him out. We thought he might be cold, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
-He doesn't seem to notice the difference between being in a swimming pool and being out of one. It's strange.
-He now wakes up from his naps crying. A very sad, pitiful cry.
-He sleeps somewhere between six and eight hours straight every night. I feel very blessed... however, I've heard it stops when they start teething. Kind of dreading that.
-His arms still flail about and keep him from sleeping well at night unless he's all swaddled up. He is, however, out-growing the swaddler, so hopefully he'll outgrow the flailing too.
-He's in the 90th percentile for his weight (or he was at his two month appointment) and 75th percentile for his height. I was worried that I was overfeeding him, but apparently you can't overfeed breast milk. And it's apparently nothing to worry about. The height percentile was more surprising than anything. Neither of us (Travis and I) are very tall, so I was expecting a pretty short little baby. However, he's only two and a half months old, so nothing's set in stone yet. ;)

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm pretty much smitten.

Marriage and Babies and Nursing, Oh My!

The day before our wedding three years ago, we were asked when we were going to have kids. I felt the question was a bit hasty considering we were still 24 hours away from being married, but we said we'd wait three years. And after our wedding, on our "getaway" car were the words "three years till kids!" Today marks our three year anniversary, and we did, in fact, stick with our three year plan. A year ago, I never would have thought that we'd have a beautiful baby boy by our next anniversary, but God's plans are always best. And while being stuck in the "postpartum" phase of child-bearing on our anniversary isn't exactly the greatest, I feel safe in saying that I'll spend more anniversaries NOT recovering from childbirth. (Although the truth is, I recovered from my childbirth ailments weeks ago--at least in terms of pain--so all that's left now is convincing my body to handle breastfeeding a bit better than it seems capable of...)

In keeping with the tradition I started last year, here are a few more things I've learned about marriage since last year:

1. Buying a house and having a baby at the same time is stressful.
    I don't think this needs explanation. Just don't do it. (Especially if you're buying a house that needs some fixing-up.)

2. Pregnancy is hard for husband and wife.
    While my dear husband never complained about my inability to do anything early in pregnancy (thanks to morning/all day sickness) or late in pregnancy (thanks to my giant belly), I know it gave him a lot more work to do. And, of course, I would really like to skip the first trimester of all future pregnancies I may or may not have.

3. If you want something done in a certain time frame (or at all), do it yourself.
    Our electricity went off on Tuesday at 12:30. I asked Travis to call our electric company and find out why. He didn't. Two hours later, I was at the point of total meltdown (literally melting), so I got the information from Travis and called them myself. For some reason, the company thought we had requested that our service be cancelled on July 8th, but couldn't figure out why they thought that. Moral of the story? Listen to your wife. Hah. Or in my case, make the call yourself. Otherwise, you won't have electricity again and you'll never know why.

4. A newborn can bring out the best and worst in you.
    I find myself feeling completely unsympathetic (in the sense that I want to physically hurt him) anytime my dear husband says he's tired... after getting 7+ hours of uninterrupted sleep. But then I also refrain from waking him up in the middle of the night to help me when I know he has work the next day. It's a vicious cycle. :)

But I sure do love being married. God gave me a good one. ;)

Now for the "I have a new baby and it's all I can think/talk about" update:
I am a mere three days away from being six weeks postpartum. I'm hoping that the miracle "week six" will literally hold some kind of miracle. I've had two bouts of mastitis and am rather susceptible to thrush now. Breastfeeding is slowly becoming less painful, but it's not as easy as I was told it would be once the first couple of weeks passed. However, I have noticed less engorgement, so that's one positive thing.

Logan will sleep at night for longer stretches as long as he's tightly swaddled. His arms startle him. The few times I've let him sleep on his tummy during the day, he sleeps so well and for quite a while. It's really a pain that tummy sleeping is so widely discouraged. He also loves looking at the ceiling--especially if there are lights on. And he's going through a phase (his phases change quite frequently) where he doesn't want to sleep during the day unless he's being held. Silly baby. I'm hoping the phase will have passed by the time my sisters leave, because I don't know how I'll get anything done if he needs to be held all day long. Although I'm looking forward to using my baby carrier, as soon as my chest isn't hurting all the time. Ah, the joys of breastfeeding.

Other than all of that, I can now sleep anytime, day or night. The dog fur is getting to me again. My mom left a week ago and it was the hardest goodbye I've ever said to her. When my sisters move back to Dallas for school, we're not going to know what to do with ourselves. And it's time to feed my sweet baby boy again. :)

A Bunch of Baby

It has been nearly a month since I last posted. The entire month of June has gone by and I haven't written about how incredibly life has changed in the last few weeks. On May 30th, we closed on our own home! It was exciting for so many reasons, one of the main ones being that I made it to closing still pregnant! But then I went into labor at 1:15 in the morning on June 1st. We spent a few hours at the hospital in the middle of the night, but I was only dilated to a 1+ the entire time, so they gave me a shot of morphine and sent me home. I napped on and off (it's hard to nap with those pesky contractions happening every few minutes) for a couple hours at home, took a hot bath to ease the contractions, and then eventually succumbed to the intense pain of active labor, fully aware that the morphine had completely worn off. I screamed through the contractions while my dear husband took a shower (it was very important to him that he shave before we went to the hospital--he didn't want to scratch the baby's face...) and my sister tried to reassure my mom (on the phone) that we were about to go back to the hospital. She was rather concerned when Brittany said my contractions were a minute and a half apart. I got the distinct impression that she didn't think Travis's shower was all that important right then. Hah. We made our way back to the hospital hoping that I had made some progress. I was beyond nervous that I had made no progress, and knew for certain that if the pain I was feeling wasn't active labor, I would never make it through the day. Thankfully though, they checked me immediately and found that I was now dilated to a four. As I was getting my stuff together, the nurse popped her head in and asked if I wanted an epidural. My response? YES, PLEASE RIGHT NOW THANKS.

:) I had to wait another hour or so before they gave me the epidural (I was very impatient--it felt like a lot longer than an hour!), but once it kicked in, everything was wonderful. I know there are some women that love natural labor and find it empowering and that's wonderful--for them. ;) But for me, that epidural was bliss. I dozed for an hour or so and relaxed for the afternoon. I was admitted at 12:45 and when the doctor came to check me at 3:45 or so, I was already dilated to a nine plus. I had read that an epidural could slow labor down, but it made me feel so relaxed and wonderful that it caused no problems in that department. I started pushing (completely painlessly, I might add) at 4:20 or so, and my beautiful baby boy was born at 5:08. Logan Stephen. And my life hasn't been the same since.

My wonderful husband spent the next week and a half getting our new home ready for move-in (with a ton of help from my sisters!), and my mom arrived on the 6th and helped us pack up our old house, clean, and helped me survive my first weeks of motherhood. It's been crazy and exhausting and wonderful all at the same time.

And, of course, I've learned some very valuable lessons in the last three weeks. :)

• Baby boys have a knack for peeing out of their diapers. I'm not sure how it happens, but we've had multiple wet onesies, wet mommy, wet aunts, yet somehow dry diapers...
• Travis (and supposedly most men) can somehow sleep through baby cries. Wailing even. Thankfully, ever since Logan figured out how to breastfeed better, he hasn't wailed a whole lot. But those first few nights? Lots of wailing.
• I would not have survived thus far if my mom and sisters weren't here. I honestly don't know what we would have done. I've already told them that they're going to have to move back in for every subsequent child I might have.
• Breastfeeding is not just mildly painful. It can be excruciatingly painful. Definitely the worst/hardest/most painful part of my postpartum life. 
• You can never have too many burp cloths.
• I often use two clean diapers at diaper changes because Logan decides to poop in his freshly clean diaper before I even close it all the way. But so far he waits till the new diaper is at least under him, so I'll just be grateful for that. 
• The Ergobaby carrier is truly wonderful--I only just used it yesterday, but it was lovely. 
• Poop explosions happen. They're unpleasant. 
• Logan wants to be held all the time. Literally all. the. time.
• Pretzel rolls are amazing. 
• I really truly wholeheartedly love my sweet baby boy. :)

one word: mangoes.

Big things (as in, huge things) seem to happen in my life every three years. (...for the past six years, anyway...) And so far, they seem to come in groups of two. Back in the summer of 2008 (six years ago, for those that don't like doing math), I graduated from high school and moved to the states for college. Then I spent the next three years in college while dating my [now] husband. In 2011, I graduated from college with a degree in English I still haven't put to much use (but it was free, guys! And fun!) and got married to the previously mentioned [now] husband. ;) For the next two years we enjoyed being poor "one-of-us-is-still-in-college" married people and then one year being not-quite-as-poor-about-to-be-parents married people. And now, in 2014, we're having a baby (any day now, I might add) and tomorrow we are buying a house. Hah! But seriously, we close on our house tomorrow!! It's all very exciting. And crazy.

[I should probably add that we had a pretty big summer last year as well, what with Travis graduating from college and getting an awesome job that actually puts his hard-earned engineering degree to good use... but I'm being self-focused and trying to find cool patterns in my life, and this particular big event messes that up. So we're going to call that "one of Travis's big life events" and enjoy the awesomeness of my three year pattern.]

My maternity shirts don't cover my belly. I have maybe three or so that still fit. When you buy maternity clothes, they tell you that the clothes will fit the whole way through because they're designed to stretch with your belly. Well they lied. The shirts still fit everywhere--except that they're not long enough to cover my belly! So now I get to try on shirt after shirt each morning until I find one that's long enough. Barely. I might be digging through Travis's shirts soon.

It's hot. And the sad part is that it's really not. We've had nice low-80s weather lately. But I'm always sweating. (Except in the car when I blast the AC and turn it down as cold as possible.) I tried wearing my jeans yesterday and nearly melted. Shorts only from now on. I would love nothing more than to turn our thermostat down into the 60s. I could go for 68. But I worry that Travis would find that excessive... and expensive. Though I will say this: if I had to be pregnant through a 100+ degree summer, we would be moving some money around in our budget for "pregnancy cooling." No joke.

My sisters have moved in for the summer. The dogs are beyond thrilled. Though they don't like it one bit when the girls go to their room to watch a movie with the door closed. We all just need to stay in the living room together like one big happy family. :) But I must say, I'm rather enjoying having the additional help with the cooking and washing dishes.

I'm sorry this post has very little substance to it. I think there's actually too much going on in my brain to make coherent sense in a blog post. Hah. I just hope everything will organize itself so I can get some sleep tonight. It's the house. And the baby. And the packing. And the painting/cleaning/moving/we've-completely-lost-our-minds stuff. Nothing a little help (moving/packing/painting) and a lot of prayer (everything!) can't fix.

Oh! And mangoes were on sale, so I bought around ten. At least.

Dog Miracles! (Need I say more?)

There's this moment of absolute terror when you let your dogs out into the rain (temporarily not pouring as much as it was earlier) to relieve themselves and instead of simply doing their business and coming back to you, they both hop into "play bows" and start sprinting through the muddy, watery, "not-really-grassy-at-all" yard. You can see the mud flinging off the ground and you get this image of two very large dogs soaked with mud and water, and you, poor pregnant "I-can-barely-bend-over" you, trying to figure out how to rinse and dry these two crazy dogs without the help of the ever-capable, not-pregnant husband. But then, God looks upon you with love and mercy and sends a miracle! The crazy dogs chasing each other through the mud suddenly return to the dry garage, only slightly wet and oddly (miraculously!!) not muddy at all. You give them a quick drying with the towel you brought and they willingly go back inside the house, knowing that they will probably be stuck inside for the remainder of the night. God is good, my friends. He is very good indeed. :) (And I'm super proud of my dogs for coming back to me, even though I ruined their fun.)

Despite how it looks if you walk into this house right now, we are officially moving (unless something absolutely crazy happens) in a matter of weeks. God has a ridiculous sense of humor when it comes to my need to plan and be over-the-top prepared for big life changes (like moving and babies and the like), so He decided to test the limits of my faith by prolonging the home-buying process to the point where our estimated closing date is May 30th instead of the "hoped-and-planned-for" beginning to middle of April date we really liked. So now we have about eleven days after closing (unless God sends another miracle and we close early!) to fix up the few things in our new home that desperately need fixing and move out of our current house. All the while staying prepared for the arrival of Baby Boy at any time in the next five weeks or so. Since I am only capable of packing and cleaning (for the most part...ceiling fans and baseboards don't seem very feasible at this point...or any later point that involves me still being pregnant), poor Travis is going to be doing a lot of stuff on his own. It was actually a year ago, almost to the day, that we moved out of our cozy little apartment into my grandparents' house to house-sit for two weeks, all the while wondering when Travis would hear back about a job and how long we'd be, essentially, homeless. But as I've shared before (or at least, I think I have), God provided a great job and a house with landlords that didn't balk at the idea of us bringing our two GSDs. And I must say, even though buying a house, moving, cleaning, and having a baby all at the same time sounds daunting at times, it's nowhere near as terrifying as our situation a year ago, and God brought us through that in a way only He could do. So when it seems like we've lost our minds, I just remind myself that God's got it. Always.

Baby is getting bigger and bigger. My bladder is getting smaller and smaller. My pain-free practice contractions are becoming more and more frequent. Sleeping isn't as easy as it once was, though I still do pretty well for myself considering. On the positive side of things, I have no feet/hands/face swelling or (ahem) colostrum leakage. My leg cramps have subsided and, over all, I haven't had too many aches and pains. (Though my husband may disagree with that last statement based on my endless complaining... OK, on second thought, the aches and pains may be more of an issue than I like to admit. But mostly when it involves standing up. And I mean the actual "getting up off the couch/bed/floor/etc. part. Once I'm up, I'm good. Mostly.) I've discovered that it's rather uncomfortable to drive with a baby jabbing into your side. It's hard to explain. But it's a tad distracting and makes me feel like I probably shouldn't be driving. Baby has the hiccups at the moment. Those are fun. ;)

We have two nests of newly hatched baby birds outside our front door. They're noisy little guys.

I no longer care (this month) about my weight gain. I just love chocolate.