Life with a Newborn Baby

I remember those special days with our newborn baby.... those days where the nights and days ***blurred*** together. Those wonderful days of functioning in zombie mode...when you awoke to your screaming baby and somehow knew you must have been sleeping for hours, yet you would come to a rude realization that it had only been 15 minutes.......


Ahhhh... the blissful days of new parenthood. Indeed there are some parents out there who are blessed enough to have children, nay babies, who sleep peacefully and willingly with the slightest rocking, swaying from their moms.

OUR sweet baby was not one of these babies. He was stubborn from Day: 1.

He somehow knew at the ripe age of 3 days old that whenever he closed those heavy eyelids was going to be the second we started doing fun and exciting new things.



He didn't want to miss a moment in this new exciting world.




He would fight........... and fight.......and FIGHT to keep those eyelids open................... and eventually the weight would become unbearable. Begrudgingly he would give into his sleepy lids.... for a moment or two (usually the moment while you were trying to put his tiny body back in the crib) before they would spring open again.
We spent so many hours trying to convince our little guy that we wouldn't do anything fun without him, but being the smart baby he was.... he knew.

HE KNEW that we were full of lies.


Flash forward 2 years later and our sweet little boy, the one who's afraid to miss out on anything, seems as though he hasn't changed one bit.

Exhibit A: Quincy falling asleep in the shopping cart at Target.

Exhibit B: Quincy trying to hold his body upright, as to convince his sleepy body that its' not really sleepy.

Exhibit C: Quincy passed out after a good 2 hours worth of screaming in protest during his usual nap time.

Our latest fun and exciting news is that for whatever apparent reason, Quincy has decided that he needs to wake up at 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 or 6:00AM..... sometimes all of them. Since he has successfully learned to open his door he walks into our room to announce to his sleep deprived parents in an eager whisper: "I awake!"

You would think that he would notice that the whole house is quiet, that his parents are sound asleep in their bed.... that the whole house is dark. You would think that maybe we would realize we aren't doing anything fun without him, but NNNNnnnnnnOOOOOooooo!

We haven't quite figured out how to make Quincy stay asleep in the morning. We don't even know why he's waking up at those hours.



What we DO know is that we are lacking desperately in the sleep department!



I feel as though I have a newborn baby again, only this time around my 'baby' comes into my bedroom or bed just to annoy me. I don't know what we're going to do when we actually have baby Pipa.......I'm already exhausted.

Tyler did give him a blessing a few nights ago that he would be comforted and sleep.....it was the first night in weeks that he slept until 7:30AM. Then the next night came.... and he woke up early again.

What to do, what to do.... Suggestions anyone????

On a more positive note Quincy went to the temple grounds with us and loved it. He kept saying "The temple HUGE!" And pointing out many of the details outside. He was of course fascinated by the water features and even tried to convince us to let him swim in the reflecting pool.....

I thought this tree was beautiful and reminded me of the "burning bush".

It was really special to visit the Portland Temple grounds with all of my boys. The last time Tyler and I were there we were being sealed together as husband and wife.

Who would have thought then that 3 years into the future we would return as a family of 3 and a half!?! I love the symbol that the temple's stand for.....** Families are Forever**.

I'm so thankful for my boys.... even if they drive me crazy sometimes and I often feel sleep deprived because of one of them.

Another positive note is that Quincy is learning to say his prayers. Although he's still to young to say things on his own, he really enjoys repeating after us to pray. It's so sweet to hear him say nice things to Heavenly Father. Each night we have decided to have family prayer together in his room. I think this has made a huge difference in the mood that he's in right before bedtime.

And lastly, something sweet that Quincy does each night is kiss Pipa, or my belly, and then he says "Goodnight Pipa! I lubb you!" It makes me smile each time he does it...and ALMOST forget about all the sleep he's depriving us of... almost.

Peace on Earth and GOODWILL to our Bank Account

Tonight we made a little visit to Goodwill to see if Tyler could find a decent basketball jersey, I mean it's not like he plays that often, so why splurge for a brand new one? The jersey he got was in good condition and was also a great price.

While he was looking for a jersey I found a cute little baby changing pad. It was in mint condition and even had a very practical attached diaper/ wipes holder. The price tag only read .99 cents, which I thought was a great price. When we went to check out at the register it only rang up .49 cents. Who would've known that it was a blue tag, and by golly blue tags were 50% off!

So this is the nice little changing pad I only paid .49 cents for!

A proud moment in history for dad:

Each day while I'm putting on my make up Quincy is absolutely fascinated. He constantly asks what things are and what they are for. He desperately wants me to put some on him too. Tyler absolutely refuses to let me do this, and considering how cheap I am, I'm too frugal to waste good make up.

Poor Quincy has to resort to just watching me put it on my own face. Today I let him hold my brushes and sponges and he was quite satisfied in pretending that he was doing what I was. :o) In my defense there wasn't any actual make up on the brushes and sponges so no harm done right?

Brushing his eye brows.... this I think should be a must since he has Howard eyebrows.

Putting a little blush on his rosy cheeks.

Having so much fund 'bonding' with mom. :o)

Happy Halloween!

Quincy went trick or treating with my parents yesterday while Tyler and I had our own date night. You can see he's quite excited:

Look at some of the elaborate car trunks for the trunk or treat:

Quincy even went trick or treating at Nanny and Pappy's..... apparently he was the only trick or treater they had, lucky him, he got some full size candy bars!

Walking around the parking lot at the trunk or treat.

Quincy was totally a pro at saying the magic phrase: " Trick or Treat."

Thanks Grammie and Grandpa for taking Quincy trick or treating. He had so much fun!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween everyone!

Just because....

Quincy has become extremely bossy and stubborn lately. I constantly hear: "Don't put my shoes on Mama" or "Don't wash my plate Mama" or "Don't brush my teeth Mama, I do it myself."

Well, I let him sit on the chair by himself and what happened? He got stuck.... to which he finally resorted to asking for my help.

Ah.... this boy is so darn stubborn!

Fall is in the air....

I love living in the Pacific Northwest because you can actually witness the changing of the seasons. Right now most or all of the deciduous trees are starting to change colors and loose their leaves. Portland is beautiful this time of year.... despite what you might hear about all the rain.

I also love the seasonal vegetables that you see in the stores... like small gourds and pumpkins.

This was the view from our patio the other morning? See there are blue skies here during fall!!

The scenic drive to Tyler's work is filled with hillsides which look like the picture below.

And lastly, I couldn't resist putting this picture of our Jack O Lantern. I love his grouchy eye browns and how he's peeking through our sliding glass window at us. Every day Quincy says, "There's my Jack Lantern out there."

Pumpkin Carving and Trunk or Treating

This year was our first time pumpkin carving....

Quincy seemed pretty happy about the idea of pumpkin carving....

Unfortunately as we actually progressed into the carving process Quincy was showing less enthusiasm.

I don't know what seemed to make him so nervous about this pumpkin carving activity... maybe it was Tyler jamming a knife into a pumpkin, oh who knows.....

We had to have a little sit down with him and explain that pumpkin carving was fun. We would get to carve a face on our pumpkin. Then after we made a face on it we could light a candle and put it inside. This seemed to cheer Quincy up a little bit....

That was until it came to the part where we had to gut the pumpkin out. Quincy was terrified of the stuff inside of it. Note the nervous smile in the picture above. Tyler made the mistake of just grabbing his hand and shoving it inside the pumpkin. He FREAKED out. He was screaming and clinging to me and must have thought that pumpkin was never going to give his hand back. After we calmed him down once more we explained that there were seeds inside. We needed to take out all the seeds so we toast them in the oven and eat them. This wasn't exactly enough to convince him so what did we do? Bribe him with smarties of course! Then he was really excited................

Look at how he excited he was after pulling out one seed.

After a lot of hard work on my part in sorting guts from seeds... this was the final result.

And here Quincy is with his Jack O Lantern.

Our ward had a Trunk or Treat and home made chili with cornbread dinner. We decided to go and Quincy was thrilled with the whole concept of trunk or treating. It only took him a few cars to figure out that magic phrase that resulted in his getting lots of treats.

By the end of the night our little pumpkin had a pumpkin full of candy!

In other BIG NEWS

Quincy went poop 2 times!

Yeah, I know some of you don't want to hear about our two year old son's bowel movement accomplishments, BUT this is huge for us. We bought him a new potty chair, which has a soft foam seat. He seems to like this one much better. We are still a long ways off from being potty trained, but we have taken a humongous leap in the right direction. He was very excited about his first potty success and as a reward we bought some Elmo stickers, two coloring books, and some potty treats. I will be sure to keep you all updated about how the 'potty training' goes. Those of you who don't are..... just skim over these posts. :o)

This last picture is of Quincy's final piece of work after a little 'craft time' with mom. He was very excited about the glue sticks part of this project. He kept saying, "More glue stick Mama!"

His project ended up being displayed on our fridge and rightfully so..... look at how nice it turned out!

Announcing to the world.....

On October 20th we found out that we are going to have...........

...............Another Boy!


I was also somewhat relieved to see that we still have ONE healthy baby inside my tummy verses two. I know it seems silly, at my last ultrasound in August we had confirmed there was only one baby in there, but I sometimes get worried that there are two in there instead of just one and the doctors somehow missed the other one. Luckily we have one VERY healthy and very ACTIVE little boy in there.

I have to say, this pregnancy has been NOTHING like my last one so for a while I was thinking, **maybe it's a girl**, but the closer we got to my Dr. appointment the more I was feeling that it was yet another boy. Sure enough, as soon as we looked at the screen during my ultrasound there HE was..... showing off all his goods before the Dr. could even tell us that he was a boy. I knew immediately what I was looking at the second the picture pulled up on the screen. So here we go again, Boy #2!

I will openly admit that I was holding out for a girl, but there are also many reasons why I'm happy it's a boy instead. First, we already have boy stuff. And secondly, Quincy will love having a little brother to play with. So in that sense all is well for me.

The part in which I'm sad about is not being able to buy all those cute little girl things. Growing up I always wanted a sister..... and never got one. I do have an older, half sister, who I didn't meet until a few years ago. I feel sort of jipped in the girl department. I never had someone with whom I was closely bonded by blood to share all my secrets with. Fortunately, I DO have a wonderful relationship with my mom, which is why I was holding out to have at least one girl.

Alas, all is not lost... because we plan on having at least one or two more kids. So there's still hope for a little girl in our future, at least that's how I prefer to look at it.

The second part of finding out we are expecting boy #2 that is sad for me is that we DO NOT agree on boys' names. It took us forever to agree on a handful of names last time around. We only had about 5 that we BOTH liked; I was hoping this baby would be a girl and save us the headache in trying to figure out a way to compromise on something as 'insignificant' as a name. :o) So far we have maybe 2 names that we agree on......................

..........................................Wish us luck.

The part that I am very excited about for this next little boy is holding him. I can't wait to see all his 10 fingers and toes, I can't wait to smell his sweet baby scented skin, and feel his soft hair (if he has any, Quincy didn't have much), and I can't wait to feel his warm little fragile body next to mine.

We feel so blessed to have healthy babies. Though my baby #1 isn't much of a baby at all anymore. I know he will look gigantic next to Pipa.

On another note I will write a little update about what's new with me, at least in my pregnancy. My belly is getting bigger daily. I've always hated Tyler taking 'pregnancy photos' because I always felt they look unflattering. Who wants to remember looking so big and uncomfortable anyways? I am considering having my pictures taken by a girl I know... perhaps they will be something I WANT to remember.

I am officially 24 weeks today, so about 6 months along now. My due date is something like February 18th or such.... the estimated due date means nothing to me since I know of very few women who actually deliver on their EDD. While we were in for my ultrasound looking at Pipa the Dr. informed me that he was transverse breech, so it looks like I have another stubborn baby on my hands again, one that doesn't want to lie vertically inside me. Lucky me, it's extremely comfortable carrying babies horizontally! Although since I'm only 6 months, we have 3 more months before we need to make any definite plans for a c-section.
Only time will tell.

I have only gained 15 pounds so far.... this has been great news for me. I gained close to 50 when I carried Quincy (although I lost it all very fast--like 30 lbs within 2 days and the rest within 2 months) .... still it was extremely uncomfortable to carry that much weight. This time around I was hoping to stick closer to the recommended weight gain of 25-35 lbs. So it seems I'm on track this time for a more steady weight gain.

On Tuesday night Quincy and I went to Tyler's basketball game. While we were waiting for the high school volley ball game to end before the city league basketball could start I felt Quincy hit my stomach really hard. It was so hard that I looked down to scold him and realized that it wasn't Quincy it was PIPA! This little boy has got quite the power behind those kicks! What does the mean will happen when I'm 9 months pregnant??? UGG!

Lastly, I'm grateful to not be sick anymore... food has become much more enjoyable, although I do occasionally have bad heartburn. This has been a new experience for me, since I've never had heartburn in my life before. Lets just say it's not something I hope to carry on after pregnancy.


And I just thought I'd end with this picture of somebody else's pregnant belly. Mine isn't near this big yet, though I'm sure it won't be long. At first I was kind of creeped out by the little foot print through her belly, but you have to admit.... that it's pretty freakin' amazing that they

1.) caught it on camera and
2.) that we, as women, carry life inside of us.

I feel very lucky to carry this little boy.... and I'm even more excited to meet him!

Seaside, Oregon

A few weeks ago we decided to be spontaneous and take a day trip to Seaside. It's been a few years since I've been to the Oregon coast.... and even longer for Tyler. Seeing as how Quincy has lived in Idaho basically his whole life there are many things he has yet to see.... like the beach and the ocean.

It wasn't necessarily the best time of the year to go visit the Oregon Coast, but actually the weather couldn't have been nicer; All considering of course. We kept telling Quincy that we were going to the beach and we would get to see the ocean. He repeatedly asked the whole drive there: "where the ocean go?" and "where the beach go?" By the time we had reached Seaside...... he was passed out.


He didn't seem to mind that he was woke up from his nap prematurely though, after all he had heard great things about this 'ocean'.

Quincy's first encounter with the beach was discovering all that sand. I do have to say, I think the sand at the beach in Seaside is much prettier than other beaches along the Oregon coast. Most of them are very rocky and have lots of sticks and such all over them. I think we all managed to get a little sand in everything, but that's what the beach is for right?

Quincy's second new adventure was seeing the ocean. He was NOT a fan of this. The ocean seemed to terrify him and Tyler tried countless times to try and coax him closer to it, but he wasn't budging. Personally I'm a little terrified of large bodies of water, especially the ocean since it seems never-ending. So I couldn't really blame Quincy for wanting to keep his distance. He eventually, after an hour there, allowed me to hold him close enough to let the water run over his sandy toes and fingers. (Which by the way, the water was icy cold, so yet another reason why Quincy wasn't too hot on the idea of all that water.)

Quincy and I managed to have fun playing in the sand. We made a big letter inscription that said "I heart Dad". Quincy had so much fun getting sand between his fingers and throwing it. Tyler refused to bring his flip flops from the car so he wasn't in the sand as much as we were, but I think we all managed to have fun.

After some fun on the beach we had lunch at a place called Sam's Seaside Cafe. Tyler had some yummy fish and chips, I had a deli sandwich and homemade chili, and Quincy got a basket of freshly made french fries. We also managed to stop by the Salt Water Taffy outlet to bring home a bag of Taffy. I think this was Tyler's favorite part! He looked just like Quincy in the store as they went from bin to bin choosing out their favorite flavors. I wish my camera had batteries!

It was a beautiful day trip to Seaside and we hope to go back next year in the summer with Quincy and Pipa.