Christmas & Big News

As you can see, we finally got a family picture taken. We feel a little bad that this did not happen sooner, but we now think it was worth the wait (now that Mr. B can smile). Soon to come are family pictures of C's family, well as soon as we find one that all of us are actually looking and smiling.

I am not sure whether to start with news or with how Christmas with the C's family went so I guess I will begin with Christmas. We headed out on the 19th (I think), our roadtrip was delightfully uneventful. Mr. B did very well (he only experience a minor carseat induced mental braekdown at hour 7 of the 8 hour tip to Denver.

He got plenty of attention once we arrived. I have never felt so blessed to have an attention hungry child he my life. I am pretty sure that Mr. B never spent more that 5 min. alone (as in not in arms or being played with directly). We went to the ward Christmas party and Mr. B got to be Santa Claus (and he made such an adorable one too). The whole week was positively wonderful, we feel so blessed that we had such a wonderful time with so much wonderful family and friends.

Last but not least G recently interviewed for and received a full-time position with Brigham Young University's OIT department. He will finish his last couple classed one at a time (with BYU paying for them). We feel so incredibly blessed for the opportunities that this will bring our family, yet we are a little sad that we will have to leave our friends at Wymount. We are not yet sure where we will move so more on that later. Happy Holidays!

Christmas on the 11th :)

G and I rotate going to my family or his family's house for Christmas and Thanksgiving (conveniently his brother and our sister in law follow the same rotation). As such we had a lovely Thanksgiving in Bountiful with the Freestone clan. Mr. B enjoyed all the pie (not really, but he thought the whip cream on his lip was rather fascinating).

We have kept up with our tradition of going to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights, sadly the weather was a bone chilling 15 degrees, so we bundled Mr. B up like the kid on Christmas story and headed out anyways. We made our way in and out of all the buildings to keep adequately warm.

Last but not least, G's family celebrated "Christmas on the 11th" (as mentioned in the title). We ate a Christmas breakfast and opened presents in our pajamas, and spent the afternoon playing with new toys. It was lovely, and we feel so blessed that we have a whole other Christmas to look forward to. We love all of our family and think its so amazing that we get to see everybody this holiday season.

Sewing Project :)

I have finally ventured into domesticity, and I must admit it was much more enjoyable than I had originally anticipated. After I was able to semi-successfully make our halloween costumes (see previous post for details) I was inspired to make something else. I decided to make Mr. B a warmer carseat canopy. I copied the one that my friend made for me only I used fleece and not just any fleece, but some super fun BYU fleece. Although the end result is by no means professional looking I am quite pleased and am willing to show it off.

The adorable Mr. B- Continued

Pictures 1 and 2-Mr. B and I went on a walk the other day and since we did not have mittens we improvised. Mr. B considered them to be delicious.

3&4- We cannot get enough of Mr. B's adorable chubbiness. He is almost four months now and weighs 16 pounds and is 25 inches long (a perfect 50th percentile on the growth charts). So cute!

Hands Free Motherhood: Intro to Babywearing

As you may have noticed from recent pictures Mr. B is carried around in a variety of carriers. We currently have three of them, while you may think that this is a bit overkill, each has its own purpose and as such I love each of them.

My collection began with what is called a "Wrap" although I bought mine at a store I highly recommend making your own as they require little to no sewing. For the first few days of Mr B's life he let me "wear" him to work (thats right, I sadly had to go back to work when Mr. B was one week old). It was wonderful to have him so close to me while I did what I needed to do. He alternated between snoozing and looking around at what I was up to. He was so darn tiny, and oh so cute.

But in that Mr. B was born in July the wrap plus a baby= a furnace, so we looked for something cooler. We did some research and found at about a type of carrier called a mei tei. We loved the idea that it was versatile. The baby can go on your chest or back, and can even face outwards, and the baby can be a newborn (like in this picture) or up to 35 pounds and still be comfortable. They sadly are like 90 bucks so I found someone selling a new one on KSL for 25 bucks! Its been great. We look forward to using it for years to come.

Last but not least is the sling, which would have been amazing to have when Mr. B was a newborn, but it has still been useful. I LOVE this type of carrier because it folds up small enough it fit in a plastic sandwich bag (it is so tiny). I keep it in my diaper bag and use it for quick trips. I even used it at Church the other day. Mr. B was being fussy so I took him out in the foyer, and stuffed him in (when babies are mad they fight you about being strapped into carriers at first) then he started to calm down. By the time I walked back into the meeting he was asleep, and as you can see Mr B also likes the sling at games, it is a comfy spot. Sadly because its not padded it is not ideal for long periods of time, but it definitely has its place. When Mr. B is able to support his body weight a little more I can use it to carry him upright on my hip. I think every mom needs one of these. Ooh and another great thing is that I had a coupon code to buy one for 11 bucks, so that was pretty great (I guess I could have sewed one too, but I am not that talented).
So basically I have fallen in love with have Mr. B attached to me. Even though he initially objects to being confined, he soon realizes that he has a pretty great view of the world when carried. I have loved getting to hold him while having my hands free to do all the stuff a mom needs to do. So basically I wanted to explain my recent hobby of "babywearing" in hopes that I can help out other mom's I know, because lets face it every mom really needs "extra arms."

If you want to learn more (for your own benefit, or to just understand why I am so enthused about this) you can visit http://www.thebabywearer.com/index.php?page=bwgreatthings or http://paxbaby.com/

Motherhood- An eternal partnership with God.

This morning at 5am I find myself awake, and oddly it was not the result of my darling 3 month old boy. Although that certainly was the case last week, which caused me to learn that my favorite shows from when I was 10 years old (Boy Meets World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch) are on between 5am and 7am .

Anyhow, it being Sunday morning I spent some time meandering around the internet instead, and I stumbled upon a video I had seen before, but decided to watch it again anyways.The video is an inspirational video clip entitled "Motherhood an Eternal Partnership With God."

I had seen the video before but I am so glad that I was prompted to view the video again because it touched my heart on this early Sunday morning, just as it did the first time I watched it (which was during a period of time where Mr. B spent most of him waking hours crying). I was particularly touched by the quote:

"You are doing terrifically well. The very fact that you have been given such a responsibility is everlasting evidence of the trust your Father in heaven has in you. He is blessing you and he will bless you."

Even typing it out I find tears in my eyes, because I find the words so uplifting. Those who know me extremely well, may know this but I am constantly one of those people who believe that they are doing far worse at life, then they actually are. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing a person who accomplished graduating college with their own hard work (no loans only academic scholarships) and good grades. I see someone who was so stupid that they studied 5-6 hours every day to accomplish a degree that made it no easier to find a job post graduation. Instead of seeing the blessing it is to be a mother at all, I find myself constantly worrying that I am a "bad mother." This especially happens at those moments where I seem to have no idea what my adorable, but inconsolable son is trying to tell me. I feel especially bad because sometimes he is especially dramatic and can announce to the neighborhood (with loud shrieks and cries) that his mother does not know how to help him.

Anyhow, that was a little tangent but it was meant to stress how basically I (and lots of other people) struggle to find the happy medium between being prideful and feeling worthless (or like a failure like I sometimes feel like I am). As such I feel incredibly blessed that the Lord constantly reminds me (through videos or outlets similar to this) that I am not worthless, but that I am just the opposite. He reminds me that as a daughter of God and as a mother, I am of extreme worth (as all daughters of God are even if there are not mothers as well). That I am not "failing at motherhood but rather that I am "doing terrifically well" and after looking at my sons adorable smiles when he wakes up every morning, sometimes I even think so too.

So to any mothers out there that are discouraged I highly recommend viewing this video, it is incredibly encouraging. It reminds us that even though motherhood sometimes seems to only involve endless days and nights of diaper changes, feedings, wiping snotty noses, attending to scraped knees, or endlessly uttering such phrases as "don't touch that, don't eat that, don't hit your brother," to name just a few, motherhood is indeed doing the "Lord's work."

It is my hope that I will remember that I am the mother God thought Mr. B needed, and that that knowledge will cause me to spend less time crying over how I feel terrible that I don't always know what he wants, and more time feeling grateful that I can hold him in my arms (even if he is crying hysterically). Ultimately, I feel so incredibly blessed that I have been given the incredibly opportunity to be Mr B's mother.

BYU Spirit!

You know you are a huge BYU fan when you:

3)Bring your 3 month old to the game (Today Nov. 6th)

2) Bring your 2.5 month old to the game. (October ?)

3) You bring your 2 month old. (Sept 25th ish)

4) Bring your 1.5 month old to the game. (Sept. 4th)

So basically in case its not ridiculously obvious, we LOVE watching BYU football games. We credit Mr. B's attendance at the BYU games as the reason he can sleep through almost anything, and almost anywhere. Sometimes we hold him in our arms and he watches the game, and sometimes we put him in the carrier or sling and he takes a snooze. We have absolutely loved getting to have him come to the games with us. He is definitely the cutest Cougar fan (although we are pretty biased)!

Halloween (Costume Success)

After not feeling like dressing up for Halloween last year G and I started brainstorming months ago about what to dress up as this year. We went Halloween costume shopping multiple times and nothing caught our eye. We decided that we wanted to have a family theme and so we tried to find costumes for Mario, Toadstool and Princess Peach (video game characters) but we did not have much luck. Ultimately, we decided that it would be entertaining to dress up as Mayo (G), Ketchup (Me) and Fry Sauce (Mr B).

As you may have guessed, Mayo, and Fry Sauce are not your average Halloween store costumes and so they would need to be handmade. This would be no big deal had the years of my mom trying to teach me to sew left me with an "an actual ability to sew" rather than the "ability to plug in my sewing machine and stare at the thing." Nonetheless, I decided it was high time that I conquer my fear of my sewing machine, take the thing out of the box, plug it it and actually sew with it.

G took pity on me, and googled how to operate my sewing machine and youtube (the internet video site) had a video that could help us. So with the machine set up I was ready to go. Well almost, because our costumes were so unique I had to design the costumes myself and so I painstakingly cut of pieces for each of our three costumes (I am incredibly scissor challenged so this was the hardest part by far).

I started sewing Tuesday night and about 5 hours later (over that night and the next two) I finished. As seen by the pictures they are of questionable quality but they were entertaining. So much so that we won the ward costume contest award for "most creative." That should have been what left me feeling proud, but I am above all else proud that I finally conquered my fear of sewing, and actually completed my first "unassisted project" and it feels great. I know actually want to sew things, my next project is a BYU carseat cover for Mr. B (hopefully it turns out well).

Farewell Single Student Housing: Hello Married Apartment #3

I am not sure if G and I mentioned it yet, but anyhow it is definitely time that I mention that we no longer manage student apartment complexes. The whole thing began early in September, when we started toying around with the idea of moving and leaving our jobs as apartment managers. at that time we did not find anywhere that fell into the category of somewhere where we could both afford and enjoy living in.

About a week after that G brought up Wymount (BYU's married student on-campus housing), I had been there before and thought that they were a great place to live, so we began to see if they had any openings. Since Wymount is notoriously hard to get in to, we feel incredibly blessed that an apartment opening was posted while we were online looking. Low and behold it was opening up on September 17th and so we could move in the next week.

We are so thankful for all the friends, family, and ward members that pitched in to get us moved in record timing. Not a small feat given that we moved from and to a second story apartment. I ended up needing to work for part of the morning that we moved and so I was super impressed to hear that it only took an hour to unload the moving van, and this was not do to a lack of stuff, but rather was the result of substantial teamwork.

We have been settled and unpacked for awhile now and we are loving our new place. Although I continued to return to the complex to train my replacement, as of Friday I completed my last day of work and I am now a stay at home mom. It has already been so delightful to spend my mornings walking around the beautiful paths at Wymount. I shamelessly try to strike up conversations with all the women I meet. Although I feel like its hard to be new in a place where there are so many other "new people" (as married student housing has a huge tenant turnover from month to month) we feel that as we continue to meet our neighbors that we will begin to love it here, even more than we already do.

Typing One Handed

Mr. B was blessed Labor Day weekend, the Bury bunch came from Denver, it was a fantastic weekend.

Adoring Our Little Guy

As time passes we are enjoying getting to know our little man. With each new day we are getting to see more and more of his personality. For starters we have learned that his favorite hobby has switched from sleeping to eating. His second favorite hobby is gaining weight. Not only did he reach his birth weight by the two week mark (newborns lose about 7% of their birth weight in the first days of life), he reached in under a week.

Now at a month old Mr. B weighs in at a little over 9 pounds. Our little man that once swam in newborn sized clothing and diapers is sporting a double chin, chunky cheeks and adorable fat rolls on his thighs. As he is our first child (and he has a photo happy mother) Mr. B is photographed as often as most movie stars.

Overall it has been an amazing month, G and I have absolutely adored being parents, and we absolutely in love with our little guy.

Assorted Mr B Pictures

Dear Mr. B - Week 1

Dear Mr B, Mommy is happy to feed you whenever you would like, but when she does please please please try to stay awake for more than 2 minutes, lest you wake up again in 10 min still hungry.
Love,
Mom



Dear Mr. B, Mommy absolutely loves your darling facial expressions. I enjoy pretending that I know what each of them means, maybe someday I will figure it out.
Love,
Mom



Dear Mommy,
My throwing up on you twice last nice was me telling you how much I love you! P.S. Thanks for cleaning me up.
Love,
Mr. B

Dear Mr. B,
As previously mentioned I am happy to feed you whenever you would like, but please please please try to sleep at least an hour between said requests. Parties from 11pm-2am are not our idea of a good time.
Love,
Mom and Dad

And Baby Makes 3 :)

It has been far too long since we have updated this, and for anyone who knows us there is definitely a lot that has gone on between June and the present. Instead of catching up we will just cover the basics, basically we are now a happy family of 3.

We welcomed our son Mr. B into our family at 12:06pm on Sunday July 25th. He weighed a tiny but healthy 6 lb. 14 oz. 19 inches long. He has beautiful dark blonde hair and plenty of it.

As new parents we spent the early part of July constantly wondering when the adorable Mr. B would make his debut. I had always joked that I wanted to have him on pioneer day. We spent the 24th in Salt Lake hanging out with family and had a wonderful time. As we were leaving Si's (G's mom) house she teased us about not having Mr. B tomorrow or on Monday because she would be tempted to still go on her annual Lake Powell.

Although the comment was made in complete jest Mr. B took him seriously and at 3:15 Sunday warning my water broke. I had only a handful of contractions so I tried to go back to sleep, it did not work as I was far to nervous/excited so I got dressed put on makeup (because I am weird like that), cleaned out the fridge a little, at 5:40am we made our way to Timpanogus hospital. By then my contractions had completely stopped, which made the ride much comfier than I had anticipated.

They put us in a room, confirmed that my water had broken, and then began what began an epic attempt at putting an IV in my arm. Two nurses and 7 stabs later they finally got the IV inserted, it was terrible. It took almost an hour, by then they were concerned that my contractions would not start up again so they started me on pitocin (so essentially they "induced me".

They continued to get closer together until they were back to back, at that point I requested an epidural (thankful the anesthesiologist was much better at inserting that particular needle). I was annoyed that the epidural made my legs feel like I was at the dentist. The nurse informed me that it was actually a good sign that I had feeling from the waist down (no pain though), and she was right.

About 10 minutes after the epidural we had a five minute scare, (Benton's heart rate dropped) thankfully our prayers were answered and everything went back to normal. That was at about 10:00am and after the ordeal I was at 5cm halfway there! The next two hours flew by, the nurse checked me at 11:55am exclaimed that I was done, we did not not know what she meant but then she pulled G and had me try to push. She said that I was so good that she was calling the Dr. immediately. 11 min and 2 pushes later we were parents!

Because It's June!

June has been incredibly enjoyable for G and I, we have had lots of opportunities to hang out with friends and family. Work and school kept us pretty busy the at the beginning of the month and now that classes are over and my nanny job has ended G and I are getting to spend lots of time preparing for the arrival of our little one. Our nursery is coming along beautifully and we look forward to putting up some pictures shortly. It is a jungle theme and we absolutely love it.
As of now its already June 21st, and so it seems as though only July stands between us and parenthood. We would love to fit in a grand adventure, although we are well aware that such is beyond my travel limitations as well as economically infeasible. Who knows though, we may be able to fit in some mini adventures in the cities nearby like Park City and Manti like we did last summer, prebabybellyness.

More Baby Stuff

Our son is due 2 months from today. We decided to update our blog. We could talk about all that is going on, but we thought it better just to show you. C got to model for a website that sells maternity clothing, milanmaternity.com. There are some pictures from that. There are also some pictures from our recent trip to Denver.