Thursday, February 18, 2010

meanderings of my brain

My house is a complete mess right now. Last night I picked up 12 HUGE* bags of clothes from freecycle. It was a completely random mix, and I have been sorting clothes all day. I am now trying to get rid of the things we can't use, and make some kind of sense of the things we can. It's definitely going to be a two day project.

There was quite a lot of baby girl clothes, which we won't know if we need until mid-March. Going through all of them of course made me hope we are having a girl, since they have the cutest little dresses and outfits! Also, I happen to know that if we had a girl she would be quite beautiful. I won't tell you how I know, and neither will Tommy. Let's just say I hope his sisters get his eyelashes and curly hair.

My wonderful aunt sent Gabe a box of matchbox cars and toy dinosaurs. He has been playing with them all day. Tommy and Jack prefer the dinosaurs, but Gabe (of course) loves the box of cars. He just carries it around and asks "Where's Gabe's car box?" It's pretty cute.

Last night my phone rang at 3:00am. That never means good news. I woke up groggily to see who it was..."caller Unknown". Huh...so I answer, to hear my sister (who lives far away in another state where it was currently 5:00am) saying, "Hello? Elise?" I explained, that no, I wasn't Elise, to which she responded, "Meggan? What are you doing up at this hour?" Um...answering my phone. Once my sleepy brain figured out that she was not calling to tell me that someone had died, but was just trying to call her early morning seminary student for their regularly scheduled class, and skype had just misdialed me, I hung up and went back to sleep. It was pretty funny...this morning, when I was awake enough to appreciate it.


*The footnote has nothing to do with the bags of clothes. Just writing that sentence reminded me of a sign that Evan and I saw today. It said, "HUGH Sale on Saturday!". I wanted to take a picture and send it to anyone I know named Hugh.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Saturday Morning...

Wow, for a little while there I was blogging every day. That is completely out of character for me, but probably a pleasant change for my readers (of which there are probably not many, but I appreciate the faithful few).

The boys are getting so cute! Gabriels vocabulary is expanding daily. Some of his favorite phrases are, kitchen, blankie cuddle, help, no poop (that one is almost always a lie), dinosaur, read it to me, mom mom mom mom mom, and my personal favorite, "Brother". He has stopped calling Tommy by name, and now always addresses him as "brother". As in, "no brother!" "cute brother" "Go away brother!" "oh, baby brother!" etc. It's pretty funny. The other phrase he has that makes me think we can never buy him concessions at the movie theater is when he asks for popcorn but calls it, "car porn". Yeah...that's a little awkward. He has been sick the last few days, so we have been spending a lot of time just cuddling and reading books. Also watching Thomas the Tank Engine.

Tommy is just getting cuter and cuter. He loves books, and will sit and read to himself (with weird growls) for long periods of time. He can say "mom", "dad", and "alice" and loves to cuddle. He is walking all over, chasing Gabe and trying to be just as big as his brother. That works out sometimes and not at others. They are getting much better at playing together. He has six teeth, 2 on the bottom and 4 on the top. He likes to tell baby jokes, and he can crack himself up. It's pretty funny to watch.

Ontario is still super busy. We are trying to figure out how to work his new schedules, and we aren't quite there yet. Hopefully we can figure out a better system soon.

Last night we went on a super fun double date with our good friends Krissie and Barry. I want to blog more about it, but I will wait until I have pictures to post with it. It turned out really cute, and Krissie and I had fun planning it.

Now I have to go finish all my Sunday prep, and take care of these sick little boys. I hope they get over this soon. It's no fun for any of us.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Tommy's Birth Story

I was reading other birth stories and it reminded me that I had not yet finished Tommy's. So here it is. As long as it is before the next baby arrives, right?

Anyway...on to Tommy's story. Tommy was due on Saturday, Jan. 17th, 2009 so both of Ontario's parents came out to be with us that week. I started having contractions Friday night so it seemed like things were progressing nicely. Gabe was born at 12:27 am on his due date, so it looked like we just had very prompt children. Saturday everyone helped me get ready, and by the afternoon all of the set up and prep was taken care of.

We chose to have a home birth, and the midwife we were working with was Dianne Bjarnson. She is one of the most experienced midwives in Utah, and has delivered over 1100 babies. She actually founded the Midwives College of Utah. Needless to say we felt very comfortable having her as our birth attendant. On Saturday she sent one of her assistants to check on me and see how I was progressing. I am sad that I can't remember her last name, but Laina was one of my favorite midwives ever. We connected so deeply and felt like she was part of the family, even though we had just met. She stayed all day and even slept over waiting for something to happen, but I just wasn't progressing. So, she left Sunday morning and Ontario and I went for a long walk.

It was even longer than we had anticipated. We drove to the mall to have a warm place to walk around in, and when we got back to the car we found out one of the tires was flat. So we walked the mile or so home. All of that exercise didn't matter though, because I kept having intermittent contractions without any real progress. On Wed my father in law flew home. By this time I was very anxious to meet the baby. We didn't know the sex, so I was still really curious about whether or not it was a girl or a boy. We kept trying different things, but nothing was working. I wasn't worried about my health or the baby, but I did want to finally meet that small person!

On Friday I had an appointment with my midwife. She said everything looked fine and that baby was doing well, but there was no change. I was all ready, it was just up the baby to decide when the time was right.

That evening one of Ontario's friends had a fondue party. Since nothing else was going on, we went and had a fun time visiting and eating yummy food. I'm pretty sure Tari tried chocolate dipped bacon, but I refrained. :) I had contractions about every 15 minutes, but since that had been happening all week I didn't think much of it. When we got home I was still having contractions. Ontario and I decided to go on a walk and see if that would help. We went on a long walk around the neighborhood, and the contractions stayed steady. By this time I didn't think I would ever go into labor, so I was just relieved whenever I had another one. We called the midwife when we got home and she said she would come check on me.

While we waited Ontario and I layed on the bed and did relaxation exercises. We had taken a hypnobirth class when I had Gabriel, and it worked really well. We had reviewed the book and Cd's again for this birth, but I didn't feel as prepared. Next time I want to take another class so I feel more ready. It was still soothing to lay there and breathe through each contraction.

The midwives arrived around 1:20 am. The attendants at the birth were Dianne Bjarnson, Angela (Johnson?), and Lisa (?). They got set up while Tari and I kept breathing and relaxing. I knew that this baby would be different from Gabriel, and I guess I thought that meant a faster labor. However, I kept having contractions well into the night without the kind of progress I had with Gabe. Most of the time Tari and I were on the bed or the couch just laying together while he helped me breath through each contraction. Around 6 I was getting pretty tired and frustrated. Tari had fallen asleep and I wanted to let him rest, but things started getting a little too hard. About 6:30 I started feeling the need to push, so the midwives came down. With Gabriel I had pushed for half an hour, and everyone says the second birth is faster, right? Not this little monkey...he took his own sweet time. I pushed for an hour, trying different positions to help the baby through the birth canal. I finally pushed the head out, but he was such a little chunk I had to do another push for his shoulders, then one for his chest, one for his tummy, one for his butt, one for his thighs, and then he finally slid the rest of the way out. It was 7:39am, Saturday, Jan 24. I was so excited to see him and find out we had another son! He looked so much like his daddy, even from the first few minutes he was born.



I remember before I had kids thinking that it might be a little gross to hold them when they first come out and they are all covered with vernix and amniotic fluid and who knows what else. But it turns out I love the feeling of holding them when they are all still slippery and warm. We cuddled him for about an hour and started nursing, and then he got to go get cleaned up and measured and I got to get a few stitches. He came in at a healthy 9 lbs, 20 inches. Once we were both cleaned up a little everyone went to bed. By that time I was so tired all I wanted was to sleep and cuddle my baby. I would say that his birth was harder than Gabe, just because I was more tired going into it. I was also expecting it to be shorter, which it wasn't. However, it was just as peaceful and joyous, and I am very happy with the outcome. Tommy is now a happy, joyful part of our family, and we are happily awaiting the arrival of baby number 3.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Another rambling post...

I feel like I usually post on my blog when I have insomnia, or in this case, child induced sleeplessness. Maybe that is the only time I really have time? Don't know...

Anyway, Tommy has been restless and/or screaming and/or awake for the last two-four hours. He was restless from when we went to bed till about 1:30, when he decided to take it to the next level with screaming. I don't know what the problem was, but I finally gave him some tylenol and he has just conked out. I, of course, am still awake.

So, we are looking at buying a house. I am very ready to move out of this place. I have loved living here, but it's time to go. We were planning on renting again, but since Ontario's calling limits us to a 10 block radius with extremely limited housing options, we will take what we can get. I think this really might be the house for us though. At least for the next few years. It's a fixer upper, but it has great potential. And as my brother Evan said, "it's definitely an Anderson type of house". It's true...we like going for the old houses with lots of character.

I took a bunch of pictures of the inside when we did our walkthrough, but I am still having issues uploading from the camera. So I will just include the ones I have found online. It looks cleaner in the pictures then it is in real life. The first tasks will be painting the kitchen (I don't hate that purple, except in the kitchen. It just clashes with the cupboards) and ripping up the carpet. I want to put in wood floors, but we will have to see what our options are. Actually, the very first job will be getting a new roof. But we will be hiring someone to do that. :)

It's a 3 bed, 2 bath house with a 1 bedroom accessory apartment in the back. The downstairs rooms are all very spacious, and the lighting throughout the house is amazing. I love the way old houses use natural light. I love the idea of being able to control what happens to our house. I also love the idea of getting a garden started. That will be one of the other top priority projects.

We will hopefully be talking to someone tomorrow to get the ball rolling on paperwork, applications, etc. The realtor selling it has been a little slow about getting info to us, so I am hoping it comes tomorrow.

Okay...I am going to try and put this baby down, and maybe get a little more sleep myself. Night all!









Monday, February 1, 2010

Crazy Hair





So, I took a couple of pictures with the iSight camera in an attempt to capture the awesomeness of Tommy's post nap hair. I don't know how he gets that kind of body and fullness. He is just naturally blessed with it.