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.