What's Up, Easter, and Mother's Day....

Well, it's been a few months since I decided to update the blog! Things got busy and it sort of fell to the bottom of my priority list. But in case you're wondering, we're doing fine :)

Here is  a little of what's been up with us:

Adam just got done with his second year of grad-school and pulled off all A's again. He's been a 4.0 student his whole grad student career! He also taught a class this semester and enjoyed that as well. He's all busy doing windows still, and he got a 20 hr a week job doing research and writing for the college this summer on the side as well. (He hopes he'll have time for some projects around the house, but we'll see...). He's always on the go.

Us here at home feel busy too, only with not so much pressure :) William has been involved with a developmental playgroup put on at the Bannock Youth Foundation down town and he loves it. He knows all his friends' names and talks about his teachers as well. (This picture is from their field trip to Pizza Hut)

Chloe is growing like a weed of course, and is crawling and moving and grooving, and oh-so happy about it! She started off with a funny flop scoot thing but it lasted for a very short while and we didn't even get a chance to catch it on tape! But now she is crawling, and William is not so pleased. He's always saying, "Chloe, NO! Don't get my train tracks!" "Don't get my cars!"etc, etc. And so it begins... Sharing battles ... yay!
>Here is where I'll put the video of her crawling as soon as it will work...<

Speaking of sharing, I also started a website (called Little Wagon Train) to write down all of my information about parenting and things I learned through working in the preschool labs at BYU-I. Partially to help me just remember it all and have  a place I could always find it all organized etc, but also as a way to share things from my parenting education training and hopefully I can use it later down the road as a resume extension :) Anyway, I wrote an article about sharing. Check it out if you want to, and feel free to leave a comment!

http://littlewagontrain.com/

We had a good Easter. First one I think William will remember well. I tried to make it as candy free as possible, but... you know how it is :)

We did baskets in the morning, watched a Living Scripture video on Christ's Resurrection, did an egg hunt before church, and later that day, we hung out with Adam's cousin Kaycie , Tyler and their daughter Leah. They had an egg hunt of their own in Leah's backyard too :)

Anyway, life has been good, and this mother's day I just feel thankful to be a mother to two beautiful children whom I love so much. We also love our mothers and here is our video tribute to Grandmothers today! Happy Mother's Day!

Picture catch up

Well Nothing too new here. I just wanted to post some pictures from the camera (they're not the MOST recent, but two months ago I guess) I think there's some from around the time of Chloe's blessing and then a trip down to Utah where we went to Stef's endowment in the Timpanogos Temple, I went to an old roommate's bridal shower and saw all my old roomies!, and we went to Cousin Daphne's baby blessing. So much fun! Glad we remembered to take pictures that time on our trip. Normally we're pretty bad about that. Oh and then some random ones of us at home.
Enjoy!


can you find the baby?? :)Camo-Baby!

Chilling with 2nd cousin Cameron and Daphne on Cousin Daphne's blessing day...


Brother and sister bet friends already. William always wants her by him.

We call this my bull dog face :) (but the cutest bulldog ever, of course!)

As soon as we get our camera working again I will post some even more recent pics. Chloe is developing so fast! She makes us smile with her big open mouthed smile every time she sees us, and she is loving her baths just like William did at her age. She LOVES being naked, and is starting to grab at her toes (I love the stage when they just sit and hold their feet all the time!). William is growing too (yet still is the size of some 14 mo olds we know...) and he finally started being able to go potty in public places without his potty seat. So no more smelling like urine everywhere we go! That's a plus. Anyway, I'll post some more interesting things sometime in the near future.

Loves!,

Kylie

A day in the Life.

While nothing exciting and cool happened today, I wanted to catch some of the little things that happen on a daily basis.
Whenever I do dishes William starts pushing a chair over saying, "dishes" and want's to help. I make him wear an apron because he's not the best at keeping water in the sink :)

William loves Chloe. When she's on the floor, or crying, he always want's to give her hugs and kisses. He says, "hold her". He also gives her her binki when she cries. Oh and he'll occasionally drive his cars on her (thanks to Daddy for teaching him that...).

William loves corn on the cob lately. And loves to help us "shuck" it, and so William says, "shuck it, corn!" when he sees it at the store and otherwise, and it actually sounds like: "suck it" when he says it. Makes us laugh every time :)

These are actually some things that happened for the first time today, but they were funny and fun none-the-less.
After I swept the kitchen I went to help Chloe and when I came back William had filled his truck with crumbs and wasdriving it through the rest of the pile :)

Then We made a fort and William ate some grapes and fishes in it. He called it "hiding".

Chloe on the other-hand is doing her same old. Sucking on Binki's...

Doing tummy-time... (and spitting up and sticking her face in it while doing it :) )

And yes that is William's foot...

And she's growing SO FAST! I can't believe it. Either she's growing way faster than William did, or I just can't remember right. She sleeps between 4-6 1/2 hours at night and is already trying to role over. I have a feeling her first year will fly by.

For fun

So the beginning of last week Adam went to scout camp for 3 days and left me by myself :( It wasn't really horrible by any means, but still lame of course. There was only one moment of complete chaos :) Other than that, we survived!
Since William was showing signs of fear of big pools, I took it upon myself to get him to like them again and we went twice to the fitness center while Adam was gone, and voila! William loves the pool now! This was after we were done.

Chloe was a champ and slept while we swam :)
And we've been enjoying our yard! Grass glorious GRASS!!! William always wants to go outside and play nowdays. We have a little pool set up and he has been having so much fun with it.

And our garden is thriving :) Growing broccoli, green beans, carrots, squash, cucumber, pumpkins, tomatoes, watermelon, and cilantro. (well the watermelon isn't thriving so much actually).

And here is our lovely porch, just for fun. We planted a Mum in our pot :)

Oh, and someone gave us a Wubanub binky thing and so far Chloe is liking it. (it's attached to an animal to help it stay in a baby's mouth.)

And just so every one knows (who're coming for Chloe's blessing, we're going to do a little celebration for William's B-day on the 3rd (since that's his birthday! :) ) So Look forward to some cake or something :) So excited to see so much family at our little place in just a few weeks!

The 4th (and other stuff)

Well after family left and we had a week as a new family alone, we did pretty well! It was fun to get a routine going and feel out a new normal. Of course, Adam continued doing projects (because there's no stopping him), and he finished the closet he un-earthed. Added some walls, shelves and paint and carpet and Voila! Another place to store random stuff :)


Then, My family all came up to visit again for the 4th, only this time my sister Michelle and her family got to come! So fun to have family over, and William LOVES his cousins. Wish we lived closer to them!
We went to the Pocatello 4th of July parade (nothing too wonderful about that. William was scared of the loud horns and such), we went to the Poky Zoo (where William was scared of bears, but petted goats like it was nothing lol), and we went swimming at their hotel (where William was freaked out by how loud and echoy it was in there and all the splashing etc). We did fireworks too. William was already asleep, but I'm sure if we woke him up for it, he would have been scared. Basically the theme was: William was scared of everything. LOL. But we still had lots of fun (even though I didn't take enough pictures :(

Oh, and we gave Chloe a blessing dress fitting. I made it thinking she would be two weeks old when we blessed her, but plans have changed... Hope it still fits her next month!!! (still need to add the sleeves)

Oh, and of course Dad and Adam had to do/ start another project while they were here...
Bathroom counter and sink before (reminds me of your grandma's creepy basement bathroom type of feel...):

And the counter top after (they found it at DI for 40 bucks!):

We'll post the whole bathroom makeover when that gets done (which, knowing Adam, will be soon-ish)
But it really was an awesome weekend and we had so much fun!

The Story

Alright, so, birth story for Chloe!

As most of you know, we had a scheduled C-section for Chloe right from the beginning due to the fact that my pelvis structure isn't favorable when it comes to giving birth vaginally, and the likely-hood of it ending up in an emergency one anyway was high enough that I just decided it wasn't worth the risk. So planed it was. We were referred to our doctor here in Pocatello from our doctor in Rexburg who he did his residency with (if that sentence even made sense...). And we love him. Doctor Kyle Clifford. But we found out that family practice doctors can't do C-sections here in Pocatello, only OB's can. So we had to meet with another doctor who would actually perform the surgery. Doctor Jones. They are actually good friends and are both bishops! So we knew we were in good hands :)
The C-section was planned for the 19th of June and the pregnancy went very smooth the whole way. Two weeks before game day the doc measured me and I was already 2 cm dilated. But Chloe stayed put. Except, she must have known she was coming on the 19th because I started having contractions around 11:30 pm the night before! They got a little more intense once we woke up and got to the hospital. One nurse even said the monitor said I was having them 2-3 min apart right before we headed into the surgery room! So I still got to feel a few contractions :)
Once in the surgery room, they put in my spinal block and prepped me all up and got to work!
All went smoothly and I'd say it was even fun. We were able to just feel the excitement without the drama and pain. The doctors just chatted (Doc Clifford was there assisting in the C-section with Jones)and--side note--I asked them to check to see how thin my uterus was looking (see if it's safe to have more children etc) and he said because I had been contracting it was thin-ish, but I'd be totally fine with at least one more :).
It all went pretty fast too. Chloe was born 15 min after they started and the whole thing was done in under a 1/2 hour. Oh, and did I mention Adam got to watch in all through a little window in the curtain they put up? He loved it. I'm not so sure I would have lol.
But It really was my dream experience. Chloe never left Adam and He was holding her waiting for me in the recovery room where I got to nurse Chloe right away. She came out starving! And she is a champion nurser (my boobs hurt like crazy).
Then we just had our regular hospital stay which lasted for not even two full days. And so far so good :)
Here are more pictures (she get's lot's of good daddy time):


As for William, he is really adjusting well too. He's starting to get more of an attitude so I think we're officially entering the terrible two's, but he loves Chloe and points to all her facial features and toes etc :)
Adam never missed a beat and continued on with some projects. We now have a dishwasher all hooked up and working and he found a hidden closed that was behind dry wall in William's room. So they opened that up and he's now just finishing it up with a new door, paint, carpet, and shelves. Does he ever stop? No. Pretty sure his work ethic is too much for me to keep up with. All I can manage is tidying and dishes lol.
Anyway, all is good and life is getting to a new norm.