I LOVE BARF HAIR

Not quite...


Getting closer...


There it is !

2 months

Holy chunky!

Wow, time goes by fast! Carden had his 2 month check up today and his stats are:

Length: 24 1/4-90th percentile
Weight: 13 lbs, 1 oz-90th percentile

I knew I had a big baby! Crazy that he has almost doubled his birth weight, because apparently he's not supposed to do that until he's four months. What a show off :) He is now in size 2 diapers and wears 3-6 month clothes.


For Carden's two month birthday, he decided to give his mama a present and start sleeping through the night. Yep, he can now sleep for eight hours straight, as long as he's not gassy. If I don't give him Mylicon drops he wakes up tooting.

So sleepy and fussy after his shots today

So yesterday I dressed Carden in the cutest church outfit and was going to take a picture of it after church, but he decided to have major poopy pants during the sacrament and totally blew out his diaper. Church is so much more entertaining with a baby :)

And now about me...Friday night my fever spiked again at 102.4 so we called my doctor and she recommended going to the ER to have my duct drained with a syringe. So we got there, waited for a couple of hours, paid a hundred dollars and saw the doctor for 3o seconds while he told me to go home and nurse my baby because they can't help with Mastitis. OK, because I haven't tried that one before. Whatever. I've now had this plugged milk duct for about 6 weeks. Six. Weeks. It hasn't been painful until this past weekend when I got the mastitis. And now the infection is clearing up with the antibiotics, but I still don't know what to do about clearing the duct. I'm going in on Wednesday to see if he can empty it with the syringe but the lactation consultants I've been talking to don't have a lot of faith in that. No one seems to know what to do with me because it's basically unheard of for a duct to be plugged this long. Grr. So I still don't know what's going on. But at least my fever is down and it doesn't hurt like it did this weekend!

A Special Day For Us

Carden managed to make sacrament special today. Thank you my son. You make me proud.

This Thanksgiving? it Stink. Stank. Stunk.

Let's start with the negative first.

What I'm NOT thankful for: clogged milk ducts, MASTITIS, 101.5 degree fevers, doctors offices and urgent cares that are closed on Thanksgiving Day, a screaming baby with an upset tummy while I have a 101.5 degree fever and no husband at home to help.

What I am thankful for: A husband who comes home when I beg, my mom and dad being in town, an aunt to runs over to help, a cousin who insists that I call my doctor EVEN IF IT IS THANKSGIVING BECAUSE YOU NEED HELP AND THEY ARE PAID FOR THIS DANG IT!, 24 hour pharmacies, drugs, and a super cute baby who is happy now, even if he won't take his nap like he's supposed to.

The verdict of this whole situation: Most likely I'll be getting surgery on Monday. We'll see if the drugs work, but I'm not very hopeful.

Just pics

I hate tummy time!

What??! You've got to be kidding me!

I will almost smile for you. Almost.

Droopy cheeks!

Mama said she wants to eat me cause I look like chocolate mint. She's weird.

I'm already dressing like Daddy-shorts and long socks.

Carden's Tricks

Six Weeks

This is how Carden feels about turning 6 weeks old today:


I know, it's upsetting to me as well. I can't believe how fast time goes!

Carden had his one month appointment last Thursday. He was 10 lbs, 7 oz then, so now I'm pretty sure he's at the 11 lb mark.

Last Sunday, Josh said there was a baby blessing of a little boy who was about the same age as Carden. And his name was CARDON! I'm so mad. We chose this name knowing there wouldn't be very many Cardens, and to meet one so soon and in our own ward just makes me mad. GRRRR.

Matchy Matchy Diapers Squared!

With Maggie in diapers now, I totally get what it's like to raise twins.

Carden and Maggie

A couple weeks ago I reminded myself why I could never do attachment parenting (there's your answer Sheri!)-because I could NEVER let my baby sleep with me - I am just too out of when I'm sleeping. So one night, I had just finished feeding Carden when he experienced some wonderful projectile vomiting all over me and my pillow and my side of the bed (in case you're wondering, no I did not change my clothes or sheets and yes I did sleep in it. Possibly for two nights.). He had been back in his bassinett about 30 minutes, just long enough for me to get in a deep sleep, when I heard him throwing up again. In a panic I jumped up, forgetting that Maggie was right next to me. I threw her off the bed, she hit her head on the metal part of the bassinett and then fell to the ground. Poor girl. She was in a complete daze, I don't think she even knew what hit her!



Boys are so much fun with their ability to create pee fountains! Carden has been much better with this lately, so I haven't been as careful about it as I should be. This morning I was changing his diaper and he shot his pee clear across the bed to land...directly on Maggie's back! Oooh she was so mad about it too! She HATES to get wet! I wish I could have taken a picture of the glare that she gave Carden. Then she went around to the other side of the bed, with her tail between her legs to pout. And no, I still haven't given her a bath. I'm so covered in pee and everything else all the time, I figure she can be too.

Lots of Pics

So, a couple weeks ago we moved in with my grandma to help take care of her and I didn't have the internet for awhile, so I haven't been able to blog lately. But we now have cable and internet so life is good again!

Carden was four weeks old yesterday. He's getting so big so fast I can't even believe it! I already have to go through his clothes and put away most of the newborn ones. So far though, he has been such a good baby. He eats and poops like a champ still and usually only wakes up once or twice in the night to eat and then he goes right back to sleep. What a good baby!

Family Picture!

Carden and his second cousin Kylee. He is 9 days older than her.

I go on a walk with my grandma and Maggie every morning at 9:30 and Carden gets to ride in my sling. He usually like it, except he's a furnace all the time and is usually drenched in sweat by the end.

Yeah, he only got to wear this outfit a couple of times and already is too big for it. :(

With Great-Grandma

With Cousin Tate

So there you go Mom. More pictures! :)

A couple of firsts...

1. First trip to the ER

Yep that's right, I got to take my four day old infant to the emergency room-one of the germiest places on earth. So, Sundaynight, I'm feeding little Carden, talking on the phone with a friend. He finished eating so I sat him up and he instantly threw up all over himself. I noticed the spit up was brown and then looked at his shirt and he had two dime-sized blood clots on it that he had thrown up as well. I probably wouldn't have worried as much over the brown spit-up, but the blood clots were kind of scary. So Josh and I rushed to the ER and me being a first time mom, didn't think to bring anything with me. No clean clothes, no diapers or wipes, no binky. We get there and they do some tests on him to make sure that the blood wasn't from him. And by tests, I mean the most painful things you could ever do to a baby. They needed a urine sample, so they had to insert a catheter. Carden screamed and screamed and I bawled and bawled the entire time. Good thing Josh was there. And then they needed a blood sample and not just a little bit from his heel. They had to get it from his arm and since his veins are practically invisible, it took a minute or two of digging around to find one. Again, me bawling and Carden screaming. We didn't even have a binky to help calm him. They also took an ex-ray which luckily was painless. All of the results came back fine-apparently the blood must have been from me, which is still kind of confusing to me, but oh well, at least he's doing fine. No more blood since then. And I've since decided I'm never going back to the ER because they like to torture babies over there. Kidding. The only good thing about was every female staff member there had to come over and tell me just how cute my baby was. Which, duh, of course he is!


2. First Bath

Poor Cards thought he was being totured again! It think it must be tough to be a baby.

He always crosses his fingers like that. Love it!


3. First ride in a car

So i'm pretty sure we have a basketball player here. He has huge hands and feet!

This one isn't a first, but I just thought it was cute. I can't forget about my other baby after all!

Here he is!

Introducing Carden James K*** (we think)

Born September 24, 2009 at 3:18 pm (He came early and during the day, just like I asked him. What a good boy!)

Weight: 6 lbs 14 oz

Length: 21 Inches

Eyes: closed most of the time

Hair: peach fuzz with some strawberry

Feet: Big

Legs: long and skinny

Hobbies: Pooping and peeing all over his newly changed clothes

The Labor Story:

I went into labor around 2 am on Thursday. I wasn't sure if it was the real thing or not, so I just stayed in bed and tried to sleep through it (Which surprisingly I did. The contractions just became part of my dreams. I was at a BBQ somewhere cooking hamburgers, and every time one hit, I'd just grab my stomach and bend down at the grill. I'm pretty sure I burned all the burgers. Weird.) I started timing the contractions around 7:30 and found out they were only 2 1/2 minutes apart so I called my midwife who told me to get checked out at the hospital. We took our time-I showered and Josh got all the stuff together and we were at the hospital by 9. I was dilated to a 5, so they admitted me and about 2 seconds later the contractions were about a minute apart and I went from "This isn't too bad" to "What in the crap was I thinking? Get me that epidural!" and "Josh where are they? GO GET THEM AND MAKE THEM GIVE ME THE EPIDURAL!" By 10:30 I had my happy drugs and life was oh so much better. Things even got a little boring. I should have brought a book or something to do :) Then after about 40 minutes of pushing, there he was!

Seriously, Carden is such a good baby. He gave me an easy pregnancy, I had a quick and easy delivery, and now he is a champion eater AND pooper-he gets that from his dad :) I just hope he stays this way!

My mom surprised me and came to meet him!

(Yeah so the date is wrong on this camera. I swear my baby was not born four years ago!)

And a couple more:

To the baby currently residing in my uterus:

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!

And please stop kicking my ribs.

Love, Mama

Less than four weeks...

26 1/2 days to be exact.

Here's your belly shot mom. :)

So I had another ultrasound last week. And lucky for me, this little guy has a head that's in the 92nd percentile. Awe. Some. Yeah, so apparently freakishly huge heads at birth run in Josh's family. Nice of him to tell me this now, AFTER I decided to bear his children.

"Happy Happy Friday Joshy Dear"

This is the song Josh was singing to himself this morning as he was getting ready for work. He loves the weeks where he doesn't have to work on Friday. I had to laugh.

I always take Maggie for a walk in the morning and we try to leave at the same time Josh does. Except Maggie has a hard time understanding why she doesn't get to go in the car with Josh. I'm pretty sure she thinks that Josh is going to play with her brother Bear or to some magical land where puppies only eat people food. Poor girl.

I think I deserve an award for this...

Josh had his much anticipated Halo part last night. 12 guys, 6 tvs, pizza and drinks...until 3 in the morning. And not one word of complaint from me! (Thank goodness for Di coming over to watch a chick flick with me).

Part-Granola

I've always claimed to be part-granola. Not full blown hippie-just in a couple of ways. I'll admit though, that the granola part of me has shrunk significantly since getting married. Well, now it's back baby!

I've decided to use cloth diapers. I have brought this up with Josh so many times since getting pregnant, but he was always too grossed out to even begin to think about it. I tried explaining to him that they're different now-it's not like you use diaper pins and those little plastic bottoms. They're DIFFERENT. But he still wouldn't agree. And then some friends of ours made the switch (thank you Alicia!) and Josh got to actually see them. Of course the first thing he says is "That's a cloth diaper? They're different than I thought."

Grrrr.

Before everyone starts to tell me how crazy I am about this, let me tell you I've done the research. For about a year now I've been doing the research. And there are so so soooo many benefits to cloth:


1. NO diaper rash. Seriously. You aren't supposed to use the cream because it ruins the material and guess what-it's not needed!


2. NO blow-outs. Yep, with cloth all those nasty up-the-back-all-over-the crib-and-clothes-and mommy-explosions? They're gone!


3. Fewer leaks. Most people say that the only time they leak is when they wait too long between changings, which any diaper will leak if that happens.


4. $$$$$ savings! Since we're down to one paycheck now, Josh and I are getting to live the poor life (which, btw-it sucks). BUT-cloth diapers come in a one size fits all (seriously-birth to potty trained!) so we're looking at $200 compared to $1500. Serious money savings.


5. Potty training=easy! and fun! Ok, just kidding about the fun part, but apparently cloth wearing kids are more aware of them, so they tend to potty train much earlier and easier. Sounds good to me!


6. And finally, The Cute Factor. Oh my gosh! Look at these! Seriously-Cow print diapers?!! It's not even a diaper as much as it is a fashion statement. My baby's bum will totally be cuter than your baby's bum!
Now don't get me wrong-there are definite benefits to disposable as well and we will still use them on vacations and stuff. They also say that cloth works best on babies that are bigger than 10 lbs, so we'll be using disposables for the first couple months.

For those who are concerned about the poop and washing and the Grossness Factor, read what the Advice Smackdown has to say about it. And then convert. Because everyone who does LOVES IT!

Remember that one time when I complained about how my baby's room was a complete disaster and that I only had like 3 months left to get it ready? Ha! If only I had known... A few weeks ago, I was in the baby's room and noticed that the ceiling looked like it had water damage, so we had an A/C guy come out and yep, we had a clog somewhere and it had been slowly leaking all over the ceiling. OF COURSE the A/C unit is right above the baby's room. Of course it is.

So lucky Josh got to tear down part of the ceiling in order to remove the water damage. We had a mold guy come over and luckily there wasn't any significant mold damage that needed to be removed.

Here's Josh cutting away at the ceiling. At first we thought the hole was only going to be this big:


And then Josh kept on finding more water damage, so it ended up a lot bigger than we had planned. Oh well, at least we're getting it all out.


Here's the huge pile of insulation on the floor. We didn't really think this part through as much as we should had. We needed to remove the insulation just in case there was mold in it, but we hadn't expected there to be quite so much.


But don't worry, it cleaned right up thanks to the world greatest vacuum!:


I don't know if I've talked about how wonderful our Dyson Animal is, but seriously. It's amazing. Totally worth the money!


I tried to cover all the baby stuff with plastic, but it didn't do much good. So now I get to wash all the crib sheets and baby clothes again.


Poor Josh hasn't had a weekend off in months now. And he definitely won't have one once the baby comes :) It's just one project after another. Sigh. I think we've decided our next house will be an apartment. So much easier! :)

Oh yeah. Good thing we only have SIX WEEKS to take care of all of this!

I seriously hate Arizona right now. It's 110 outside and to me it feels like 150. I'm so hot all the time now! So this evening, I decided to take a cold bath in order to cool off. Except for the one problem that we have NO COLD WATER PEOPLE! THERE'S NO COLD WATER IN ARIZONA RIGHT NOW! There's something seriously wrong with that! GRRR!

Books I Have Read and Loved Recently

I've had a lot more time to read since I stopped working. I used to read all the time, but stopped when I was in college. It's probably a good thing I don't read as much as I used to. Once I start a book, it consumes me and I can't stop until I finish. I would feel bad for neglecting Josh, but I get neglected all the time when he plays computer games, so I figure this just evens the score a little.

Here are a few of the books I've read and loved recently, for those who are looking for some ideas.

These is My Words by Nancy Turner. I loved it. It's a story about an Arizona pioneer (not LDS) and it made me realize that people were crazy for ever moving down to this place. Why are we still here people? It's 114 degrees outside!


The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I loved it as well. It's set during WWII and is written from Death's perspective. So don't expect a happy book. But seriously, a very good book.


The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Again. Loved it, loved it. This is about a family who's crazy pastor/missonary father made them move to the Congo in Africa during the 60's or 70's. I hope our missionaries never act like that. And that I never have to live in Africa.



We're now reading the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, but I haven't started it yet, so I don't know if I can recommend it or not. If anyone else has any good books that I could suggest for my bookclub, let me know.

Let the countdown begin!

Check out my freaky long arms in this picture with the massive veins on my hands. I am so veiny right now! It's kind of sick.

I am officially at 30 weeks now. Thanks goodness! Dang this whole pregnancy thing takes a long time! Lucky for me, things are still really easy. I get backaches if I sit for too long, but other than that, everything has been great. My skin and hair are awesome right now-I can easily go 4 days without washing and no one would even know. Seriously. It almost makes me want to be pregnant all the time. Almost. But not quite.

Shhhh!

Josh and I may possibly be agreeing on a name!  Still too soon to say what it is yet, just in case I jinx this and he changes his mind, but WAHOO!!

Project: Home Improvement and a Request

So Josh (and I) have been working like crazy trying to spend as much money as possible before this baby comes, because we know that once he's here, that's the end of it.   We want to have the last of our home improvement projects as done as possible, so Josh has been very busy on the weekends.  

Josh gets bored with one project, so he tends to work on about 3 at once.  And since I'm too wimpy to do much with them, I tend to just sit on the porch and cheer him on.  Poor guy.

Remember our backyard when we first moved in?  

Well, this is what it looks like now:

We're waiting for all of the Bermuda grass to die before we plant our sod.  We put up the little barrier in the back and will one day have lots and lots of pretty flowers, and if you look really close you can see our fig tree in the back right corner.  One day it there will be lots of figs for people to eat, so come on over! (Seriously-who even eats figs these days?-but it's a cool looking tree).

We used to have sicknast linoleum in our bathroom that was stained yellow and pulling away from the floor where the toilet and shower are.  But not anymore!  Soon the tile will be done and once again I will be able to pee in my bathroom instead of walking down the hall 14 times a night.  

(PS-Out of all the projects Josh has worked on, he's decided tiling in the worst.  Which is probably why it's taking the longest).  

This is my project:

This is supposed to be the baby's room.  As you can see, it's not quite ready yet, so nameless baby had better not come early! Now I'm down to three months! I'd better move on before the panic starts to set in again.  

Finally, here is my request.  This is in the front room in our house.  This wall is the first thing that people see when they come in.  And it is a very large, very empty wall right now.  I need ideas for what to put on it.  Any thoughts?