Nope, I'm not even going to apologize to myself for not blogging more. We all get so busy around the holidays and between Thanksgiving and New Year's I can almost bet I won't get around to it. As for right now, we're experiencing technical difficulties with the computer spontaneously shutting off so until we can get it fixed it's hit-and-miss for me to even get online.
Things around here are just the usual pre-Christmas break busy, but with some wedding stuff tossed in too. Mckenzi will recieve her endowments on the 22nd then get married on the 29th. I've been up a couple of times to help dip pretzels, stuff envelopes, fold paper puff balls, etc.. I think a vacation sounds good right about now too; I may have to hide in their luggage and go on my own honeymoon:).
Jed is done with school till January, then after this next semester will have to do some major schedule shuffling to fit in nursing school. It will be sad for him to leave Qwest when it comes to that, they've really taken care of us. It's been a long time since I've paid for school!
I am still enjoying the work/baby balance. I get so excited to come home and do all of the mom stuff, but get excited to be able to go to work and be in a different environment too. I always pictured myself as a stay-at-home mom; but I actually think I like having a little bit of both in my life because both jobs are so different.
Ary is of course still changing a little bit every day. Her new thing now is to push up on her knees so she's on all-fours. She can't get anywhere like that but just kind of wobbles for a minute before she goes back down on her belly. We'll have a crawler pretty soon it lookes like. Maybe I should use Christmas break to baby-proof the house. She loves to go diet coking with grandma Teresa

and shake it with grandma Mitz:)

Do all babies do this?

Remember the "bitter beer face" commercial? Ary has been a little Jim Carey lately pulling this face and it cracks me up every time.



I've seen babies do this before too and can't understand how they stay asleep in such an awkward position. Ary has started to roll onto her belly while she sleeps and somehow managed not to kink her neck:).



I enjoyed the newborn stage when she was so tiny and the clothes and diapers were tiny too, but this stage is so much fun now that Ary has some spunk. It's fun to be able to interact more with her. We now take fewer naps and play more, eat rice cereal from a spoon, *almost* sit up alone, and put whatever fits into those little fists straight to her mouth. She loves playing with Schroeder and hanging out with grandmas and grandpas too.

October 09 recap

This post is more for me just to be able to look back on and see a few more "firsts". Things around here are still mostly the same as ever, we have lots of days like this,
but for the most part we are all healthy and happy. Ary has been eating rice cereal
and has obviously not quite known what to think of it, but I think we're learning to like it slowly.
Jed has been busy with work, school, basketball, and his calling with the priests, so Ary enjoys time with him when they hang out in the evenings.
He is done with statistics and next semester will be moving on to pathology. This one-class-at-a-time stuff gets tedious for all of us, but Qwest helps pay for it as long as it doesn't interfere with his work schedule so we're not complaining too much. He's a good student and I'm a good nagger to get things done, so slow but steady will win this school race.
On Halloween Ary hung out with her "buggy" cousins
and was the cutest glow worm I've seen yet.
As for me, I'm trying to get back into the gym and on the treadmill, but am feeling like an 80 year old. I'd like to get back to exercise every day but that will be a work in progress too. My car is finally feeling it's age too, the poor thing is 10 years old now and has bit the dust so I'm driving Jed's bug. You should see me crawl into the back to strap in Ary for work; we're quite the sight:). Life is business as usual though and we are just taking the ups and the downs one day at a time. I'm getting excited for the upcoming holidays more this year since I'll have some fresh entertainment with Ary around!

the BUMBO

I think this is one of the greatest inventions I've come across. Ary will sit for a little while all by herself in her Bumbo while we eat dinner or I'll put her on the counter while I load the dishwasher. The other day Jed brought banana bread to his mom's Sunday dinner, so Ary sat right next to the mixer the whole time he made the batter and watched the paddle spin around. He was able to get everything mixed and loaded into the tin while she sat there. We've held her so much that she thinks she has to be up in someone's arms all the time, so it's a feat in itself to get small things like this done without her having to be picked up!
I know people will say that we spoil her by holding her a lot, but my feeling is that it's not like we're going to have a whole bus-load of kids to do this all the time with, so I don't care if my baby wants to be walked and rocked around right now. This time is already going by so fast and pretty soon she won't need to be cuddled anymore:(.
We go tomorrow for her four month shots and check up. She is still changing so much so fast; we notice little things that are new almost every day. Her eyes are changing from that slate newborn color, I'm crossing my fingers they'll be green like mine:) and the hair she lost after the newborn stage is coming in lighter too. She definitely is starting to look like her own little self and not a generic baby anymore, yay!

Go Jazz!

Dr. Graf and co. were unable to attend the Nuggets game, so he generously offered his tickets to Mitzi. Well there were two sets so Jed and I got to go too! It was so fun. Dr. G's tickets are with the 100 club so we got to go upstairs and have a yummy buffet before the game, then sit on the THIRD ROW! It was so incredible to be that close to the players and be able to listen to them talk to each other. We all gawked at how huge they are up close and deciphered a few tattoos even:).



The "Birdman" as they call him was so funny. He thought so highly of himself when in reality we thought he looked like a big goofball. Check out the red wings on the back of his arms.


Well the Jazz won and we had such a good time! In my next life when I'm rich and famous I'll have season tickets like these every year;). We loved it! Thanks for sharing Dr. G!

Happy 3 months!

I can't believe it's been three months since Ary joined us. Life has changed so much in such a short time! She is such a big girl now; holding her head up, sitting in the Bumbo, finding her voice, and watching TV. I was so sad when I packed her newborn clothes up, but this stage is so much fun too. There is a personality and lots more smiles than when she was brand new.

This summer...

Blessings

Ary was blessed July 5th. Jed did such a good job, you would never have known how nervous he was. I feel so lucky to have a perfect little girl and a great husband. The day-to-day things are sometimes such a challenge for me but I feel so blessed to have these new challenges in my life right now; we have a new chapter opened and I'm learning little bits of it every day. I've heard it so many times before but all the moms who have told me are right; motherhood is probably harder than having a full time job! The days of "clocking out" are over; in addition to ortho I now have a 24/7 job that is much more intimidating most times but also much more rewarding:).

I don't want to forget

Time is flying by and Ary is growing by leaps and bounds every day. Everyone I talk to says how fast our little ones grow up and in a blink they are teenagers! My blog is going to turn into just a baby book but I don't care right now; I want to record how precious and tiny she once was and be able to look back and enjoy it. Maybe I'll try to do weekly or monthly photos with updates so if I decide to make a hardcopy someday it will all be done for me.


4 weeks

My favorites

I know, two posts in one day- I'm going to turn into one of those people... Oh well, new moms are entitled to it, right?

Newborn photos

The only smile we caught

I told you guys I'd have a gorilla baby, look at the hair on her back and shoulders!



For Bobbi and Meagan; the fluffy skirt from our shower

The only features I can claim are those feet and toes!

More monkeying

Yes, I fell off the planet

I knew that I was a space case before but never imagined how I would be after I had a child of my very own. This little girl came into our lives and everything else dissappeared to me! All of the cliche`s are true about becoming a parent for the first time :).

Friday night I started feeling pretty crappy and achy but it went away so I just went to bed and tried to forget it. Saturday afternoon I was feeling cramps and a backache, so I got on the treadmill and walked for a minute hoping it would bring on some stronger contractions, but as soon as I stepped off they quit. By this time I think I'd had it because I'd been in early labor for two days now. I got up the guts and drank the castor oil I'd had for a week and not dared do it. Eeww- that's something you never forget either! I went to bed that night hoping it really would work for me; not sleeping due to the on-and-off contractions and backache.

Well, Sunday morning 5:00 AM rolled around and I hopped out of bed so fast thinking I'd just wet the bed! They say you sometimes can't tell the difference and I sure couldn't for the longest time; I kept telling Jed, I think my water broke but how do I be sure and when do we go to the hospital? I waited around until 7ish when the contractions were really bad and we decided to go over. By the time we were checked in and I was in a room they were killer enough to cripple so the nurse said I could get the epidural right away. Oh man, can I just say how thankful I am for modern medicine and facilities; I would haved died in childbirth if I were a pioneer.

Once the epidural kicked in, labor went really fast and around 12:30 I was ready to start pushing. That's when things got really difficult- I pushed for THREE hours and couldn't get poor baby girl past my pubic bone. (Sorry for the TMI...) The doctor said she was stuck and no matter how good I was doing with my pushes, (and yes they WERE good, I watched the monitor the whole time!) I wasn't going to get her out by myself. He talked for a split second about a c-section but said forceps would do the trick with a decent episiotemy. Well, the salad tongs and a little cut sounds much better than surgery to me, so that's what we did and at 4:00 baby girl finally made an appearance.

I'm a little morbid, but I had to watch in the mirror while I was being sewn back together while Jed went with baby to be cleaned and weighed. She was 7lbs, 18 in. and had dark hair all over!

We still didn't have a name at that point, so she spent most of her first day of life with us nameless. The next day we settled on "Ary". We both liked the sound with "Argyle" and are going to use that spelling even if some can't pronounce it as "Aury" because I like it without the U.

Long story short, the first night was absolute Hell for me between the drop in hormones messing with my emotions and not enough pain killers in the world, but life is good again. We are all home safe and happy and Jed is such a good mother to the both of us. I appreciate him more than I have in all the years we've been married. Good job mother Teresa raising him- you did so well:)

He's going to be home with us for the rest of the weekend and come to Ary's first doctor visit on Monday.

Meeting each other for the first time

After the first bath (check out the hairdo!)

Yep, a mullet!

A peanut in the carseat

Intro to Schroeder:)

I think I'm ready?

Yep, I've somehow managed to go almost ten months without posting a belly pic. At first it was because I just looked pretty chubby for a long time, but now that it's obvious I don't have an excuse. Someday I'll probably wish I had more to remember this time by; it's just hard to see yourself change in ways you don't have much control over!

Now that it's days away from baby really coming I feel more scared and excited than ever. All of the "what if's?" are getting to me; what if we're not as prepared as we should be, what if I can't breastfeed, what if I don't know how to make her stop crying, what if I can't make ME stop crying... Ahh! I'm a big stressball as it is and I'm ready for things to hurry up and happen so I can start dealing with them, wish us both luck- baby girl will need it!

Shower time

I need to say a big THANK YOU to Jed's mom for hosting a shower for baby girl at her house. She did such a great job decorating and playing hostess. My mom and sisters did the treats, I think they turned out so cute! Thanks to Jed's sisters too for all of the work they put in also, it was great :)
Now the hard part for me: getting everything put away and organized how I want it in her room. I don't even have everything set up yet, let alone decorated and put together- thinking about it stresses me out. Ahhh I get overwhelmed too easily with all of this stuff now that it's really time to get going with it. I'd better get over freakout mode pretty quick or both baby and I are in for it when she gets here!