Flossing

In anticipation of my annual (which hasn't been so annual) dental appointment coming up on Monday, I've started flossing again. I try to floss for two solid weeks prior to my appointment to avoid the "Importance of Flossing" lecture that I have received many times in my life. Unfortunately this year I scheduled my appointment only a week in advance and forgot until last night that I needed to start flossing.

As I stared down into my sink full of splattered blood and spit last night after only flossing one side of the top of my mouth, I realized I have very little chance of escaping this dental exam without being re-educated on the importance of flossing and probably scolded for my lack of care for myself. After coming to this conclusion, I remembered why it is that I hate flossing so much. Yes, I know that it is even more important than brushing, and if you had to choose only one of the two, you should floss and not brush because it is better for your over-all oral health. I've heard it a hundred times, and when I do decide I'm going to floss, I am really good at it, for about 2 weeks, and then the motivation wears off. So I hate flossing, and here is my reasoning:

I don't know how many of you have perfect mornings, but I don't. I never do, and never have had a perfect morning. Mornings were not made for flossing. So I try to do it at night. I start out strong and then about two weeks into it I'm too tired one night to floss, but it's okay because I flossed last night, or two nights ago, or on Monday... see the trend? Habit destroyed. Then when I realize I've let a month or so lapes, I start flossing again like a model citizen, only to finish the night in need of a blood transfusion. It's a vicious cycle, and I hate viciousness, therefore, I hate flossing.

On one final happier note, tonight was day two of flossing and the loss of blood was much more tolerable. I only bled in 3 places. Maybe I can pull this off after all. But I still hate flossing.

Lucy Says the Darnest Things

Ok, first of all, can anyone tell that this little girl is in heaven? She loves her little sister so much. But I have to write down what she said tonight as I was putting her to bed before I forget it. I was tucking her in when she looks at me and says "Mom, I'm just so distressed because my blankets keep falling off me at night." What 4 year old says that? Where did she learn that word? It's not like I walk around all day talking about how "distressed" I am. She cracks me up.

Meeting Little Ali

Alright, time for the promised pictures, and trust me, this picture purging session will make up for the fact that it has taken me ten days to get them up. But they are a little out of order due to our ever slowing computer.

Here we have Jack who discovered the booger bulb and found it way more entertaining than our adult chit chat. He'll do just fine as a big brother.



And I just love this picture of Shawn and Alivia. Hey, what does everyone think of Shawn's new specs?

And just to prove that Jack does love his little sister, this was the scene before he found the booger bulb and then Grandma got a turn with the baby...

I know this is the same picture as the one at the top (for the record, it's not the exact same, but unless you have them side by side you would never know that), but honestly, how sweet is this little thing. I can't stop looking at her, so I can't put her down, so I don't get anything done.

This is Jack and Lucy first meeting Alivia. Look at Jack's face. You will never know how relieving it was for me to see this reaction.



And this was Lucy's first reaction, but this was a little more predictable.

Bob and Pam were Alivia's first visitors. Pam was so excited she almost didn't let the nurses finish their check up.

And this is Shawn and I as we are waiting for the Nurses to come and discharge us. We were so anxious to get home. They kept me a full 48 hours after she was born because they had to monitor Alivia that long because I had the Group B Strep.



Since we got home, Jack has loved Alivia. Any time he hears her crying he comes running from various parts of the house with her "pinK eye-yi" or her pacifier. Jack is still using his "blue eye-yi" which we had limited to his bed only, but since I took the bumpers out he has learned how to sneak it throughout the day. His time is limited, but I'm dreading it, it's going to be an ugly thing to take that away. But he hears her crying and insists that the baby needs her "pinK eye-yi" (You have to say the K's really hard.)



And this is my mom and little girl. We got a picture of her in the hospital, but it was dark and taken in secret because my mom doesn't like pictures taken of her. We took this just as we all headed out the door to take her to the airport, and we all know how the remainder of that day turned out. I'm just glad she could come, she was such a help.

One final update, I just took Alivia in for her 10 day check, and she weighed in at 7 lbs and 9 oz. It's funny how much she has changed from the day she was born. As I was uploading these pictures I almost didn't recognize her because she was so much chubbier when she was born than she is now, just a lot of water weight and swelling. I'll take her either way though because I think she is pretty dang cute. Today we also had her newborn pictures taken, and I can't wait to see how they turned out. I'll be getting the disk, so don't worry, I'll make sure to post them up here. Stay tuned!

And then there were 3

Today we took my mom to the airport so she could head home :(. She was a LIFE SAVER!!!! My kids love her, and she is so ridiculously good with little kids that I don't even have to worry for one second about my kids missing me when she is here. She made us a lot of fun little goodies while she was here including an ADORABLE hat for Alivia, a head band for Lucy, and two neck pillows for Lucy and Jack. She is so creative, I wish I could get those juices flowing through me a little more freely.

So last night Shawn's brothers Chris and Dave (and Adriana and the kids) came down to see Alivia. We knew we were going to be taking my mom to the airport today, so Dave and Adriana took Lucy up to their house last night for a sleep over with her cousin Matthew. We picked her up on the way to the airport to say by to Grandma. Apparently the excitement of a sleep over kept Lucy and Matthew up a little late talking last night, and then Lucy woke up in the night "sick" and spent several minutes with her Aunt Adriana in the bathroom "throwing up". Really she just fake coughed violently into the toilet for as long as she could. Then Adriana spread Vicks vapor rub on her tummy because it was "magic medicine", and she was fine. Clearly Lucy missed mom and dad.

After we dropped off my mom, we headed to Bob and Pam's, and that is when my kids decided they were going to unravel themselves. Lucy was suddenly crying at the bat of a butterfly wing, and Jack was just being Jack and feeding off her sensitivity. Then 4:30 hit and Jack turns into a monster like clock work. So things were going down hill fast. Nothing major happened, the two older kids were just wrecks. Alivia was peacefully sleeping. So at about 6:30 we decided to pack the kids up and head home, and this is how that worked out for us.

I had Shawn change Alivia's diaper while I finished eating dinner. Then I started feeding Alivia while Shawn rounded up all our stuff and got it out to the car. Then he changed Jack and we were ready to go, just waiting for Alivia to finish eating. That's when I noticed she pooped again. So as soon as I finished feeding her, I started changing her diaper. I got one diaper off, and got her all cleaned up. Then, as I opened the next diaper and reached for her legs, she started peeing. The pee quickly spread all over the mat that she was laying on and her shirt quickly soaked it up. Well, I thought I was all prepared for a few hours away from the house with a new born, but I'm a little rusty. I had forgotten a change of clothes. So at this point I'm realizing Alivia will be riding home in pants and boots, and wrapped in blankets. It could be worse.

So I take her shirt off and use several paper towels (which Lucy brought me) to mop up the puddle so I can get the diaper on Alivia. As soon as I start mopping up the puddle, what does she do? She starts pooping! So now I need more paper towels which I quickly send Lucy to fetch. Just when I get it all cleaned up, she poops again. It was just getting ridiculous, but I was so glad that I had her on a changing pad so that none of this mess got on Bob and Pam's carpet. So now I'm having Shawn get me a warm washcloth to give Alivia a quick towel bath because trust me, she needed it at this point from all the filth she'd put herself in. Then I finally got her diaper on and as clothed as means would allow.

So I send Shawn to wash this changing pad off, and I pick up Alivia and put her in her car seat, the one that is covered in a brand new cover that I spent several hours working on the last few weeks, and I love it. As soon as I get the straps pulled over her shoulders Alivia spits up, and spits up A LOT! Now it doesn't compare to Jack's puking a few weeks ago, but it probably was to scale for her size. Her entire arm and shoulder were coated, and she had created a pretty big puddle in the bottom of her car seat. So I start unbuckling her and pulling her out when the second wave hits. When I pulled her out of her seat there was 1/2 a cup of spit up in a puddle in the bottom of her seat. In come more paper towels, and cue second towel bath for Alivia.

After cleaning up the third mess, I finally got Alivia into her semi saturated car seat and buckled her in. Then we spent the next 10 minutes getting kids in the car and fighting Lucy's seat belt. We finally pulled out at 7:30 with an emotionally exhausted 4 year old, a done 2 year old, and an empty 4 day old baby. Remember how we were ready to leave at 6:30? I guess our kids had other plans, mainly Alivia. All Shawn and I could say on the way home was "Welcome to the life of 3 kids, we're on our own."

Alivia Mae Hammond

Alivia Mae was born at 3:24 pm on 1-11-11. Hey, if you are going to pick an induction date, may as well pick a cool one. She weighed in at 7 pounds 15 ounces and fulfilled my goal of having one under 8 pounds (though she isn't an over achiever by any means).

Everything went so smooth that it almost seemed boring. We checked in at 6:30, got the pitocin going by 7:30, and then just waited. I was hoping for a 11:11 or 1:11 delivery time, but we had to get at least 4 hours of penicillin through me first since I had the Group B Strep, so they took things nice and slow. I decided it was time for the epidural about an hour after they broke my water when I was falling asleep between contractions only to be woken up with a vengeance as they got more and more intense. Then I took a quick little cat nap until the nurse kept moving me around because Alivia's heart rate kept dropping. They were about to do an internal monitor and try to somehow increase my fluid levels (not sure how you do that) when they realized she was just ready to come. It went so quick and easy, and I was able to feel everything without any pain, loved that. Honestly, if pregnancy weren't so hard, and adjusting weren't so hard, and kids weren't so hard, and expensive, I would do this more often. As of right now, we're just enjoying this little thing and loving every ounce of her.

A couple funny highlights of the labor are of course where Shawn was involved. I think he was really worried about how fast I would go after our experience with Jack. Once they broke my water (it was about at noon), Shawn and the doctors thought I would go really fast, so Shawn decided to run down and get something to eat. I was impressed with how quick he got down there and back, it was no more than five minutes. The second he opened the door to my room, he heard a baby cry and it scared him half to death. We were laughing pretty hard about that. The other funny thing is that we told our nurse that Shawn made the mistake of watching the epidural with Lucy, and almost passed out. After that the nurses and doctors babied Shawn the whole time, and even thought that he wouldn't want to watch the actual birth. It was kind of funny.

Lucy and Jack were melted immediately when they saw her, and apparently Lucy had big old crocodile tears in her eyes the whole drive home last night when she realized that her little sister wasn't coming home yet. I'm anxious to see those two little buggers again today, and I know they can't wait to hold their little sister again. I don't have a ton of pictures yet, but don't worry, more will come. We have some on the camera right now that will pull some heart strings.

The Days of December

December, as always, was a very exciting month for our family. Of course it was the Christmas Season that brought most of the excitement and anticipation, but we had a few other fun things going on that made it even better. One night, we had the Lunar eclipse, so Shawn and I stayed up late and watched as much of it as we could out on our back patio. I was FREEZING cold, and there were a couple of times that I thought my shivers were going to put me into labor, but we survived, and got about a million pictures, but I'll only post one.

Now, on to the Christmas joys! We had a family do the 12 days of Christmas for our family, and I cannot tell you how much my kids loved this. Lucy quickly learned that every night around dinner time if she opened the front door, there was a surprise for us on the porch. We all loved it and I only wish I knew who it was so that I could get a recipe or two from them. Thank you so much for everything our secret santa!

We also had our ward Christmas party where Santa made his appearance. I'm really glad they had a Santa because I was a total slacker this year and never even got the kids to the Santa at the mall (we only had one car for most of the month, and we were car shopping the whole time to, it blocked out our schedule really quick). Lucy was so excited she could hardly stand it. Jack was so not excited, and slightly traumatized, as are most 1 year old kids who are introduced to Santa.

This is Lucy preparing to meet Santa with our good friend Sheryl, who Lucy adores and usually asks if she can play with.



This is Jack preparing to meet Santa, from the safety of my lap across the room, and holding a death grip of my sweater in his little fist.

And this is Lucy with Santa. Pretty much couldn't be happier as she asked for a Princess Barbie and promised that she had been an angel all year.

And this is as close as we got to Santa with Jack. No amount of encouragement was going to convince him that this dude in the red suit was a friendly being.

Lucy calmed Jack down, that and the fire truck that showed up outside right about now because some kid pulled the fire alarm. With the alarm, the sirens, and all the flashing lights, Jack quickly forgot his near abduction experience with Santa.

I have to say that I have been extremely disappointed with our "winter" around here this year. December was such an ugly month for us. We did get this ice storm one day in December and it was so pretty. Shawn is always much better about taking pictures of these kinds of things than I am. We didn't get a white Christmas, and we all know that is just a slap in the face for me, but we did get our big storm on New Years Eve, but even that was a disappointing amount of snowfall. It really just made the roads terrible, as I posted below, and caused a bunch of accidents, and then melted 2 days later. Not ok with all this. No wonder my mother in law who has lived here 20+ years hates winter, winters here are pathetically disappointing a frustrating.

Lucy's 2nd Nutcracker

Lucy had her second annual Nutcracker Recital in December. I know I have promised pictures for a while, so without further adieu:

This picture was taken at the very end of the performance when the parents get to come up and give their little girls some flowers. This is one of Lucy's favorite parts of the whole recital. She feels so important. That, and she loves being the center of attention.



And who do you think she get's that from?



Jack LOVED watching the recital. He loved the Jazz part with all the fun lights and music, but he LOVED the Nutcracker himself. He spent most of the time asking me where the Nutcracker went whenever he wasn't on stage.

And just because it is tradition now, I give you the Blue Wall picture.

This is Lucy's main dance. She had another small part that I didn't get on video on this camera (don't worry, we got it on the camcorder) because I was trying to take actual pictures during it. The pictures turned out terrible since we weren't allowed to use flashes, so I decided to record the main dance, which has made it much easier to share on my blog. Enjoy, oh and keep in mind Jack was sitting on my lap while filming, so it is a little jumpy.

Don't you love how Lucy is helping her partner? That poor little girl hardly ever showed up to class, so Lucy would always try to help her out. The annoying thing was that Lucy's teacher could never remember if Lucy was on the left or right (probably because Lucy never had a partner there). So they kept switching Lucy back and forth, and in the end she was very confused about which way she was suppose to turn. It was one of those frustrating things you just sit back and bite your tongue about as a parent. My favorite part of the whole dance is the very end when Lucy and her partner stay on stage. Then her partner runs off to the right (the logical, closest exit) and Lucy skips all the way across the stage. So cute. In the end, even though she forgot a part here and there, she was still adorable up on stage!

Our Car Accident

We just bought a new car on December 15th. With Shawn's new job we quickly learned that we needed a second vehicle. We went about 2 weeks trying to share, and I have never spent so much time loading kids in and out of a car and running around town. It was insane and after about 2 days we knew we just had to bite the bullet and get Shawn a car. We found an awesome 2006 Toyota Corolla that was super cheap, and it had low miles. The best part is that we were able to talk them down a thousand dollars too! So we bought it, and we love it. It's a manual so Shawn still needs to take me out and break me in with it.

Anyway, on Friday (New Years Eve), Shawn pulled out of work and drove about one block before he slid off the road and into a curb. He tried to drive it a little further but quickly decided it so wasn't worth it. He knew the alignment was off because everything was shaking like crazy, and he didn't want to cause more damage by driving it all the way home. So he pulled off in a Kmart parking lot and called me to come pick him up. Thank goodness for our CRV which is AWESOME in the snow. As I was driving, I saw at least 5 cars that had been in accidents, one was a snow plow pick up truck, the kind with the extra set of wheels in the back so they look like they have big butts. It actually lost both of the back wheels on the passenger side. It was CRAZY out there. I also noticed that the cops had completely shut down Austin Bluffs (a major street here in CS) because it was such a steep hill. Lucky for me, I got to Kmart, and we got home without even slipping once thanks to "Rocket" aka our CRV.

I remembered hearing a report on the radio station when I was going to pick Shawn up about a 20 car pile up on South Carefree (another major street in CS that is a big old hill). I thought to myself, wow, this is bad, let's get home. Anyway, tonight Shawn showed me a video of that 20 car pile up. This gives a pretty accurate account of the road conditions that night, and helped me understand why Shawn slid off so quick. It's nuts! That said, I suggest you watch it with the sound turned off. The guy filming it swears pretty much every other word, and I wish I were exaggerating there.

REMEMBER TO MUTE IT, LANGUAGE IS TERRIBLE!!!

I've never posted something this risky, but it just shows how bad the roads were that night. It was CRAZY!

A Post a Day for a Week!

So it turns out that I am really really really behind on my blogging. When I went to download what I thought were Christmas pictures, it turned out that I had pictures from Halloween on the camera still, which means they were not posted at all. So get ready everyone! I will be doing a post a day for the next week to get caught up. If I don't catch up this week, it will never happen since our little girl is coming a week from today! Once she comes this blog will be flooded with pictures of her little cute self and I will forget all about Christmas. So my post for today is below, and it's Halloween. I am ashamed.

Halloween

Yes, it is January 3rd, and I am finally posting Halloween. I'm pathetic. I had to make a Halloween post or I would have to reconsider my self proclaimed position in life as a good mom. Just a random fact for those who care, this Halloween marked our one year anniversary of living in this house. That makes this house the second longest place Shawn and I have ever lived since we have been married, right behind our apartment in Provo where Lucy was born. I'm so happy that we are not packing up to move right now! Get excited everyone because the CUTEST video clip ever made is included in this post, just scroll down!



Jack was very into the whole pumpkin carving thing this year, he loved that I just let him dig in and get dirty.

Lucy helped too, but her main job was to separate the seeds from the guts, and to supervise me as I tried to cut out our awesome pumpkin. Shawn spent about 15-20 minutes drawing our pattern out by hand because our printer wasn't working, and we were waiting for our new one to come. We carved a witches profile with a cat silhouette inside, it was awesome. Unfortunately, I took ZERO pictures of our finished project. I must have been a loser this Halloween because I also forgot to take a picture of my kids in their costumes.

Lucy and Jack were so spoiled this year, they got to go to 3 different trunk or treats. One at our ward, one at Shawn's brother's ward, and one at the Highlands Ranch Rec Center. By the time Halloween actually rolled around we had so much candy that I decided to hand the candy we had gotten back out to the trick-or-treaters. It was a genius idea if I may say so myself. We handed out the stuff we knew we would never eat first, and we still have a huge bag of stuff in our cupboard in January. So on the actual Halloween night, we let Lucy hand the candy out. She LOVED this! We still dressed our kids up, but we felt no pressure to take them out since we were already a little overwhelmed in the sugar department. That and Halloween was on a Sunday this year, and since we don't live in Utah or Idaho anymore, no one thinks to the trick-or-treating on the Saturday night before. This video clip is from Halloween night while the kids were handing out candy. I don't know what it is with my kids, but this is one of my favorite video clips of all time. One of my other favorites also involves bubbles. It's from when Lucy was about the same age, and she is blowing bubbles. So funny!