Life with our Spudette

        When McKenna was sick over Christmas we were at Jason's parents house and thankfully, since we were both sick too, his mom was able to take care of her. More recently McKenna and I both were showing cold symptoms, nothing major but McKenna was eating less and sleeping more, so I called in to the doctors office and we went in later that day. Turns out I had bronchitis and McKenna had an ear infection so we were both put on amoxicillin. Since being on our medicine we are both doing much better and McKenna is back to her normal self!

Happy baby girl!

          At McKenna's appointment we got her most recent stats as a 7 month old. She weighs 19.1 lbs. (84.39%) and is 27 in. (89.84%) long. Growing like crazy and is completely healthy except for the ear infection that she is getting over. We couldn't be happier with how she is growing. Her tricks to date include:

• recognizing both mom and dad (she's done this for quite some time but it never gets old)
• eating small/simple finger foods by herself (puffs, yogurt melts, etc.) even without any teeth

No teeth but super happy to gum-up her food

• attempting to wave, usually its a full arm wave to dad when he's leaving for work. She does try to wave with just her hand...she gets the motion down but its never AT anyone :)
• still taking two amazing 2 hour naps and sleeping through the night (Babywise...read it!!!)

She usually sleeps the wrong way....her head should be on the left side of this picture :)

• still loves her jumper for the most part, not as much recently because of her ear infection
• is content and happy to sit on the floor with toys while mom reads or cooks/bakes in the kitchen (although we did have an incident because she was sitting in our kitchen.....a nose dive + a hard kitchen floor = a bloody nose...thankfully she was ok even if I wasn't

Sitting on the floor getting her sign ready to wish Grandma Kim a Happy Birthday

• 'talking' saying consonants such as da-da(her favorite), ya-ya and ma-ma , her little voice is a constant reminder of the many years we have to look forward to of her voice, God-willing, filling our home
• she has also been very vocal during church, in the sanctuary, and when we are in our church's atrium. It echos in both of those rooms, they are large with vaulted ceilings and McKenna will not stop talking when we are there
• she sits on her own, falls rarely (remember the nose dive?), for the last few weeks she has been rolling all over the place and in the last two days she has started pushing herself up on hands and knees. She isn't crawling yet just getting up and rocking somewhat but I know it's in the near future!!
• McKenna has also been joining me at the gym! We belong to a small gym and their nursery hours don't always line up with the times I am able to work out so most of the time she is sitting on the floor next to me. We are developing her love of fitness from the start :)

          Besides all of these physical milestones and achievements that McKenna has reached we are also trying to instill values, morals, and good healthy habits in her. [Some people (I've met these people in years past) would say, 'You're trying to teach a baby? You can't, they are too young to learn.' When comments are made like that I quickly have to turn off that defensive part of my brain holding all of the knowledge I gained while getting my Degree in Early Childhood Education and turn on the understanding part. While those people are wrong because of course you can and should teach young children, this idea of teaching VERY young children is newer and only recently gaining popularity.] We are helping to teach her these things by doing them ourselves. Both Jason and I know that by implementing these positive habits in our life we will be showing her and any other future children (no, there are no future children in the works right now) how to live God-pleasing lives. An example being saying prayers, every night, whether it's Jason or I are putting her to bed, we hold her hands and say a bedtime prayer. Developing that as a habit so early on in her life will stick with her later on.

         Developing a new good habit is not a strong quality of mine so I have been consciously trying to work on myself. Since my last competitive soccer season working out constantly has been difficult for me to do. I enjoy playing sports and working out with people but when I'm by myself my motivation seems to disappear...especially when I look around the house and realize how many other things I could be doing. The last few weeks I have been able to set a work out schedule and for the most part stick to it! My hope is that this will be the first of many good habits I'll develop.

       What are some good habits you've had to a)work on for yourself b)are instilling in your children?

The Holidays

*I've said this before but.....better late than never......my technology skills are severely impaired......so sorry to the few family members that are actually interested in my sporadic life


Life has been zooming past us the last few weeks...more like months. Our baby girl is almost 7 months old (Where has the time gone?!?!?), Christmas and New Years have come and gone, we had family visitors (and sickness) and took a impromptu trip back to the midwest. With everything that's been going on I feel as though we haven't spent any time at home or just as the three of us but it was all worth it.


The weekend before Christmas some of my family arrived to spend the holidays with us and do some sightseeing. While they were in CO they visited Focus on the Family, Monarch Mountain, Garden of the Gods (a family favorite) and, the highlight for my craft-minded sister, Hobby Lobby (they don't have them near where she lives in MN). Since they were only able to stay for about a week there wasn't much time for sight seeing but we were able to have plenty of family time together celebrating our Saviors birth!

My beautiful sister, her daughter and me with mine

A trip out to Stadium Bar and Grill with my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and Spudette


I stole these pictures from my sister's blog (check it out here!) since I am terrible with my camera and didn't take any pictures while my family was here for Christmas.

Then we got a huge surprise after Christmas! Jason's mom wanted to fly us out to WI to be there for his family's Christmas. A few things made this even a possibility, first, our nephews were sick so they had to push the Christmas celebration back a few days, and our pastors family was going to leave to be with their family in the midwest but changed their plans.....SOOO we booked the tickets and set out to prepare for our fist flight with our Spudette. It was such a huge help that my sister, who has flown with her little one, was here as I was preparing and could help me make sure I was packing everything that we needed for flying with a baby and that the milk and formula was packed correctly.


Being so far away from our family we didn't expect to see anyone except through skype, we were so blessed to be able to see some family members in person. We also spent time on Skype....through computer or in person we were able to see almost all of our immediate family. Such an amazing Christmas!!!!


Blessings as you start 2013!

1st Thanksgiving in Colorado

Thanksgiving looked a little different for us this year being so faraway from the majority of our family. Our Thanksgiving used to typically consist of driving to different family members houses, eating a lot, spending time with with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents (and maybe some Black Friday shopping). Instead, this year our Thanksgiving celebration looked like this: Wednesday night, Thanksgiving Eve Church Service with a pie social(so yummy!), Thursday, thanksgiving day dinner and watching football with some church friends, on Friday we were cleaning the house and prepping our food (cooked our turkey overnight) for hosting a Saturday Thanksgiving dinner, having 7 friends come over and bring wonderful additions to our meal, Sunday morning we had church/bible study and once we were all home it was nap time then for dinner and a football game we headed over to a church friends house.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was delicious!!!! We only made a few of the dishes and here they are:
The Turkey ~ We tried something new with our bird this year thanks to my mother-in-law and it was amazing! We buttered and seasoned it using: garlic salt, seasoning salt, black pepper, poultry seasoning and sage, then put it in the oven on Friday night 10pm at 300* and the Mister got up at 5am Saturday morning to take it out(LOVE HIM!). We let it cool for a few hours then took all the meat off the bone, put it in the crockpot with the juices sans the fat, until we ate around 3:30pm that afternoon. We loved doing it this way for a few reasons being 1) we didn't have to even think about our turkey because it cooked while we slept, 2) it was super easy, 3) it was amazingly tender! We will definitely be trying that recipe again!

The Ham ~ We cooked our ham the way the package said to. I know, boring, right? But it was great...I may have added extra brown sugar...LOVE the caramelization that happens! Even though it was Thanksgiving and the main event is supposed to be the turkey I am such a sucker for the ham. The Potatoes ~ We HAVE to have mashed potatoes at every holiday. I think it has something to do with growing up in meat and potato country, the Midwest. We boiled, mashed and mixed up 10lbs. of potatoes to put in the crockpot. As long as your crockpot can be set on low or warm the potatoes will stay fluffy and creamy until you're ready to eat.Peanut Butter

Cream Pie ~ I cannot even pretend to take credit for thinking up this amazingly sweet concoction. I am NOT a baked fruit person. I don't know what it is, the texture maybe? So when I was trying to think up a pie to bake for our church's pie social I googled recipes with graham or pretzel crust and came across this one. I didn't end up using it for the pie social but thought I would let my Thanksgiving guests be my guinea pigs to try it out. Everyone who tried it said it was good enough to make again. Personally, I am the worst critic of what I make, I thought The peanut butter/whipped cream mixture was a bit much which made the pie extremely sweet....not always a bad thing but can be overpowering for some people.

Our amazing friends are the ones who brought everything else to complete this feast. We had rolls, corn, green bean casserole (one of our favorite dishes!), wine, beer, dump cake, and turtle pie! It was a great first Thanksgiving in CO! (This post is very boring without the pictures, I apologize. I forgot to take pictures on Thanksgiving and I haven't been able to get our friends pictures yet to add to this post. Hopefully you have a great imagination ;)

Total Spudette

I have not devoted much time on McKenna updates for the main fact of having little time. I knew with her arrival it meant lots of visitors, different schedules for Jason and I and still attending a variety of events and practices. All of these happenings took up plenty of time and blogging wasn't a priority compared to hanging out with the cutest daughter I have! Now that she has gotten older, 4 months a week ago, her schedule is different and she takes longer naps (that post is for a different time, Babywise is AMAZING) I have more large chunks of time during the day to spend doing things around the house and blogging. So this is the start of my attempt to update you on our little girl's first 4 months.

Asleep with Dad while Mom gets her bottle ready.

McKenna's 4 month appointment went great, minus the vaccines.! It is so hard to watch your little baby in pain even when its for a good reason. She is 16lbs.(90%) and almost 25 in.(70%) long and extremely healthy which is all that matters. During our appointment McKenna started showing off for the Doctor and even grabbed her nuk out of my hand and put it in her mouth. She had never done that before, usually she can get it close but is typically sucking/chewing on the hard plastic part of the front or side but that day she finally got it! McKenna is also becoming more and more focused. She will look and watch for her nuk and especially her bottle, she definitely knows her bottle when she sees it, she also loves watching dad, mom, and Sophie (our lab mix). Sophie and McKenna were never really that interested in each other but lately McKenna can't keep her eyes off of the dog while Sophie still runs and hides every time McKenna starts to cry. 

When we got close to the 4 month mark we also started cloth diapers. This topic seems to be a difficult one for some people saying that issues with cloth diapering outweigh the benefits. Deciding to cloth diaper was a no brainer from before McKenna was here. Shortly after we got married two of our neighbors and close friends were pregnant. Both of their husbands were studying to go into the full time pastoral ministry and both cloth diapered. Now I'm not saying if your in the ministry that you have to cloth diaper, it just so happens that alot of people who are in the ministry do cloth diaper. The main reason being cost, which is true for us as well. http://www.snapsandsnails.org/blog/2011/02/25/how-much-were-really-saving/ This blog post goes into great detail, she did a TON of research, about the cost difference between disposables and cloth...about $3000 difference and that's only for 1 child. After having so many trustworthy friends using cloth and seeing how much we could save it was a no brainer for us, but I do know that it's not for everyone. So far we have 2 new bumgenius, love them, 4 second-hand fuzibunz, love them, and 6 thirsties covers with about 20 prefolds, starting to like these more. Originally I had issues with the thirsties, leaking being the main problem but I think it was due to my inexperience with cloth. After a few days and trying different folds with the cover we have been leak free :) Besides starting our cloth diapers life around here as been amazingly relaxing and simple. Fall seems to have officially started here in Colorado with cooler temperatures and we couldn't be happier to finally have Holidays just around the corner. We are looking forward to getting together with great friends to celebrate Thanksgiving and all we have been given this year and then Christmas will be here before we know it and some of our family will be with us to celebrate our Savior's birth. We can't wait!! Here are some pictures from McKenna's first few months. We love her to pieces!

3 Months

3 months and 17 days to be exact; that's how old my beautiful spudette is today and how long it's been since life has changed forever....for the best!

As amazing life has been its also been a bit chaotic lately. In the past month McKenna has traveled to and through 4 new states, met 4 of her 5 great-grand parents, saw all 6 of her grandparents again (they visited us shortly after her birth), met 4 uncles and 2 aunts, met her God-parents (Jason's brother and sister-in-law), met 3 cousins, numerous great aunts and uncles, and was able to spend quite a bit of time with the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that visited us when she was just a few days/weeks old. In addition to that, the day after we got to MN we had to cancel our plans because I was in urgent care with a temperature of 103*, sever dehydration and pneumonia. NOT the way we intended to start our vacation! Thankfully being with family made it much easier to be sick since they all wanted to take care of us and McKenna, it was almost a relaxing time :) A HUGE thank you again to our family who took care of me!

We loved being back in the Midwest but it was definitely too short of a trip especially not knowing when we will be seeing all of the family again. During those 2 weeks we were also able to see a few good high school and college friends and all of their adorable kids. We also found quite a few future gentlemen suitors for McKenna from among our friends children, can anyone say 'arranged marriage'? Wouldn't it be great, to be able to pick an amazing, Godly spouse for your child? Anyway, that's a topic for a different day.

Finally!

I've been trying to figure out how to load pictures and I think I've finally did it...at least for now :) Enjoy!

Our first picture as a family of three!

Spud Is Here!!!! And it's a GIRL!!!!

***Just a note before you read this...#1- it's LONG, #2- it's detailled, hence the 'long' part (and possibly TMI for some; you do know you're going to be reading about labor and delivery of a baby right?), #3- it's picture less because for the life of me I cant figure out how to add pictures to a post from our iPad (I'm technologically challenged BIG TIME)


Our lives have changed a bit these last few weeks. It's hard to believe that just three days after my last post we were blessed with a baby!!!! McKenna Kimberly decided to join us a few days early, which is a completely new thing for the women in my family because everyone seems to go late, but we couldn't be happier for when she came!!!!  


McKenna's journey into this world started on Tuesday, July 3rd, when my mucus plug came out and I started having somewhat regular contractions. We still decided to take Carmen, Jason's sister who was visiting, out to a few breweries to meet some friends and try some local beer. Everything was going great until we got up to leave the first place, as we walked out this gush of fluid came out and I literally thought I peed my pants. Not exactly the best feeling especially because we were all headed downtown to another brewery for more CO beer and pool. So needless to say, once I decided that no, it wasn't my water breaking, we took a detour back to our house so I could change and grab extra clothes in case it happened again. The contractions were still there and even though they were coming semi-regularly they still weren't regular and consistant enough to make me worry. Plus they had gotten less intense than what they had been the past few weeks. So the next few days I kept a close watch on everything and really monitored how I felt just in case my body was going to give me any other clues on how close to baby time we were. 


On Friday, July 6th, my dad, step-mom and cousin arrived for the weekend. It was great to see them because it was the last time to see them before this Fall and they brought with them a glider we had purchased (which proved very useful the next day). On Saturday when I woke up everyone was still sleeping except my dad so we took our dog, Sophie, for a quick walk and came back to get ready for the day. This was the first time my cousin had been here so we were going to take her to Garden of the Gods to do some hiking and sight seeing. By the time everyone was getting up, around 9 am, I started realizing that my contractions were coming pretty frequently. I still wasn't timing them at this point but just overly paying attention and getting excited. It wasn't until around noon that I started timing them and realized that there were consistently coming between 5-6 minutes apart and lasting anywhere between 40 seconds and 1 1/2 minutes. This got me very excited but I knew I had to be patient because if I was in labor then this was just the start! 


After my contractions stayed consistant for about two hours we called into the maternity triage and asked if we should come in. The nurse said it definitely seemed like labor but not to come in until my contractions were much harder, where I couldn't talk or walk through them (those weren't exactly the encouraging words I had hoped for). So Jason and I did a few short walks up and down our street to keep me moving and try to keep Spud moving down as well. Around 9:30 Saturday night we drove over to the hospital, my contractions weren't getting closer but they were getting more intense and I wanted some confirmation that we were actually in labor. Motivation was key during my labor!!! 


Our first nurse when we got to the hospital, Shannon, was great! She hooked me up to all the monitors to check on Spud, myself, and the contractions so she would have some information to tell our doctor when she called her. After sometime she called our doctor and when they checked me I was still about 75% effaced, but I was now dilated to a 5. Our doctor was a little concerned about my blood pressure and that Spud seemed sleepy but another 20ish minutes and a cup of cranberry juice later everything seemed good and normal. Once our Dr. didn't have any more concerns she gave us  our options. Since our goal was to try for an all natural birth, with no assistance from the doctor, she  said we could go home to labor for a few more hours or get checked into the hospital and wait. Jason  was concerned that I was getting too tired so he suggested we get checked in and that I get some  medicine to help me sleep before the real intense labor started, which we did. Shannon gave me 2  doses of Fentanyl which allowed me, and Jason, to sleep for about 3 hours which was amazing and  much needed.   


When I woke up I decided that I had slept enough and was to excited to sit around any longer. I wanted to start doing something to get Spud moving, especially since when Shannon checked me I  was only dilated to a 6, almost 7. We opted first for the jacuzzi tup, I was able to sit in it and relax a  bit while Jason used the hand held sprayer to put some counter pressure on my back, back labor is no  fun but it did help to get the job done. While I was able to manage my contractions easier in the tub  they had started to get more intense so after about 40 minutes I was ready for another change. This  time, the exercise ball and walking around in our room. This enabled Jason to get a little more sleep,  the contractions weren't terrible, and me to move Spud. The ball was great and helped a ton to get my  mind off the pain, I suggest it to everyone! Around 5:30am our doctor came and checked me and I  was at a 7 but my contractions weren't getting closer so we opted for her to break my water to see if  that would get labor progressing any faster.....it did!!!! 


I never knew that contractions could be non- stop :( But the worse they got the closer we were to meeting our little one, that was the one thing I  tried to focus on and it was a huge help in getting through the labor. Walking wasn't helping much  anymore so our next nurse suggested we try the shower. There was a hand held attachment so Jason  was able to help a TON by applying counter pressure again just like in the tub. Before getting in the  shower the nurse checked and said I was dilated to 8 and when I got out and started feeling like I  should push I was at 9. The nurse got ahold of our doctor and was given the green light to let me start pushing whenever I felt I needed to. By the time our doctor got there I was dilated to 10 and the  action started. Almost immediately the room had about 3 more nurses and my bed was taken apart for delivery. Pushing is a completely new experience, unlike anything I have anything experienced  before, and near impossible to explain to someone who's never had a baby. But let me tell you...it was so incredibly worth every minute, because this amazing little blessing, a daughter, was brought into  our lives. 


The last few minutes before she came out they needed to give me some oxygen but as soon as she was born they put her on my chest. AMAZING!!!!!!! I couldn't believe she was actually here! I got to have her for a little while but then they had to take her to the warming table because she  was cold and blue and they couldn't get her to pinken up. Jason was right next to her and I was  exhausted and  thankful for just a minute to hear the doctor say that everything went great, no stitches and the   placenta came out completely. Once she was pink I got to have her again until the nurse took her and Jason to the nursery to wash her and get her footprints while my nurse helped me get ready to move to our postpartum room. 


McKenna was born at 8:39 a.m., weighing in at 7 lbs. 1 oz., 19 1/4 in. long, and her head was 13 3/4  in. We couldn't be more in awe of this miracle that God has blessed us with!