Preparation

I am going to keep with the tradition of honesty on my blog, and tell you that things have not been easy lately. I notice that sometimes before big events happen, such as getting married or having a baby, life seems to get tougher. I think it is partly because we receive trials to help strengthen us for the new responsibility that lies ahead. These last couple of months must have been so that we could be strengthened and prepared to be Brielle's parents. And because of that, I am thankful for my trials. I know that there must be opposition in all things. So here is how the last few months have gone. I am writing these by no means to complain, but rather to document what has happened and how we have grown. My blog and my personal scripture journal are the only journals that I keep, so I try to keep the blog updated for the main purpose of having a record that our family can look back on one day.
The week before Halloween, Jif got an awful ear infection. It was actually pretty cool how I found out about it, because Jif did not have any of the usual symptoms of an ear infection (cold symptoms, runny nose, crankiness). The way I figured out is because he went up to me and said "Mama, ear owie". It was a milestone for us because that was the first time that Jif could actually tell me what was wrong. I looked in his ear with my otoscope and I saw one of the worst ear infections I've ever seen. His ear drum was bulging, just about ready to rupture. I took him to the doctor right away and the doctor was also shocked that he had no other symptoms with an ear infection so severe. So then Jif started on 15 days of a dose higher than the recommended maximum dose for children of Amoxicillin. The day before that I came down with a urinary infection and a skin rash. The urinary infection caused me to have severe internal pain in my abdomen and my side, so we were a tough combination- Jif and I. Between the two of us, we were on 5 prescriptions. Jif was doing much better by the ward Halloween party, so we went. My husband even got to go, even though we were on Apartment Coordinator duty. Jif was a Robot for Halloween, and as you can see in the picture, he brought his best friend "Robby the Robot" with him, he was so cute. He went trick or treating, and mama and dada got to eat all of his candy because he was allergic to everything they had. It was ok though, because I bought him a pack of candy that he could eat.

So the next day I gave him a piece of his candy and he threw up. He felt really hot so I took his temperature. It was 102 degrees and stayed that high for about 3 days. He was cranky and miserable. I took him to the doctor, but we really couldn't find anything wrong so she said it was a virus and we stayed home for a few days. About a day after his fever broke he broke out into a rash all over his body. It was classic Roseola. Most kids get roseola some time in their childhood and most adults are immune to it. So after almost a week Jif was better and could go and play. However, he was sick over Halloween so he missed trunk or treat and some Halloween parties. Instead we stayed at home and had our own little Halloween party. I made sloppy joes and put the sloppy joe filling in a hollowed out pumpkin. My husband and Jif hollowed out the pumpkin for me. I also made a delish strawberry spinach salad and pumpkin cookies and homemade french fries. It was a fun dinner. Jif really liked getting his hands dirty in the pumpkin. About a week after he was better from the Roseola infection I was at Costco getting some groceries and Jif threw up on the


floor. I got the mess cleaned up, changed his outfit and continued on with my shopping. Suddenly he threw up again, and again and again. I couldn't get him to stop to even pay for my groceries. So I had to abandon my groceries and run for the door while he continued to throw up every 2 minutes. I got him home and wanted to go get him some pedialyte, but I couldn't leave my house because he was vomiting still every 5 minutes, although he hadn't had anything to eat or drink. Luckily our neighbor went and got some for me. I wasn't too surprised by this illness, because several kids in our ward had gotten it with similar symptoms. I was just hoping that Jif wouldn't. He ended up getting it bad. I had to take him to the Urgent care of the hospital that we go to because he hadn't peed all day, and he wasn't able to cry tears or drink anything. He was so lethargic and so miserable. Urgent care gave him some anti-nausea medicine which luckily stopped the vomiting long enough to get some fluid in him. And since the medicine worked so well, we didn't have to admit him. That was a hard day. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant, my husband was at school all day, I was covered in vomit several times, and Jif was so miserable and I was so worried. He got a Priesthood blessing that night from my husband and our friend. They blessed him that he would be able to tolerate liquids and I saw that blessing work. For the next few days he threw up several times and couldn't eat anything, but despite all of the vomiting, he continued to have wet diapers and tears so I knew that he was getting the liquids he needed. The poor boy wasn't able to eat anything for about 5 days. And he wasn't able to eat anything besides crackers and bananas for about 7 days. Finally the sickness ended, but not before my husband and I caught it. It was miserable. The day that I got it I had a prenatal appointment and I let the doctor know that I had this virus that my son had. She gave me some medicine, but the nausea was so bad that I couldn't even drive without throwing up. I was on the freeway, throwing up into a paper bag and trying to be able to pull over to the side of the road while vomiting. A very dangerous move, but everything turned out ok. I went a few days without food, but both my husband and my nausea were not nearly as bad as Jif's.
A week after this incident ended I threw a surprise 25th birthday party for my husband. I've never done anything like that before. I had made preparations for weeks and was hiding all of them and praying that he wouldn't find them. Once he really scared him because he had closed a word document for me that contained sensitive material, and I thought he had seen my plans for his party. But he hadn't. On Sunday I told him that I had forgotten to change some light bulbs as part of our rounds for AC duty, and he went to do that for me. I ran around the house and put the decorations on the ceiling, table cloth on the table, plates, forks, spoons, and cups out. Put out the birthday cake (chocolate ganache cake with blackberries) and candles, put out a three tiered stand of blackberries and chocolate chip cookies on the table, put water bottles on the table that were labeled "Happy 25th Birthday ! With a picture of a 1985 quarter on them. Made the blackberry punch and put it out, made the guacamole and chips and put them out, and welcomed everyone into our home. It looked awesome, but I forgot to take any pictures. When my husband came in and everyone yelled "Surprise" he was so confused and surprised and happy. I will never forget his face. Whenever I am sad I just think back on that moment and remember how happy I made him and everything is better. It was an awesome night. We played our favorite lawyer game with our friends "Life's a Pitch", and laughed and had a great time. It was difficult to come up with the invite list, so if I forgot you I'm sorry. I was trying to pick my husband's friends, not mine, so I did the best I could. Only one bad thing came from the party. On our door, hung a beautiful wreath that my mother-in-law made. It has antique Christmas ornaments glued on it. Some time during the party an ornament on the wreath broke and the glass got tracked around our house without us knowing. It's understandable, there were around 40 people at this party in our small apartment, so the glass pieces went everywhere. Well before I realized that glass had been tracked around our apartment, I saw Jif put something in his mouth and say "Mmmm Yummy". I figured he had found a piece of cereal on the floor or something, but I went to check anyway just in case. When I opened his mouth I found a large shard of glass in his mouth with part of it chewed up into little pieces. I told him to spit it out, and he did. He didn't have any cuts in his mouth. It took me a long time to figure out where he could have gotten the glass from, but once I saw it I put the broken ornament in a plastic bag, put Jif in the car, got my husband from school and went to the emergency room. I didn't know whether or not he had swallowed any. They x-rayed his stomach and chest, but the glass was barely visible on the x-ray and the doctor said that the x ray did not prove in the least that he had not swallowed any glass. She talked to a pediatric gastroenterologist and debated doing a scope in the intestines, but they decided against it. Instead they told us to watch and wait and see if he gets any symptoms of a bowel perforation. She said that she was pretty confident that he would be fine because even if he did swallow the glass, he probably chewed it up small enough to pass without problem. But still, I was pretty freaked out-- watch and wait in case of a bowel perforation!!! I had a hard time with the anxiety and the "what if" questions I kept asking myself. It's been about 5 days now, and no signs, so that is good. But it still freaks me out. I also felt a lot of guilt that I didn't see the glass on the floor before he got to it. When we got home from the ER, we put him in the highchair and I scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, while Josh inspected every inch of carpet and dumped out his toys and vacuumed. We found several pieces in random places, all of them smaller than the piece he found. We found it in places like the bathroom, around the couches, by the kitchen table, etc, all smashed up that it was nearly impossible to see unless you were looking for it. Oh what a nightmare.
My pregnancy is still going well. I will be 39 weeks tomorrow. I was getting some very intense and painful contractions last week that really fooled me, but besides interrupting my sleep schedule, they didn't lead to anything. On Monday if I haven't gone into labor yet, I get to make the decision of whether or not to be induced. This may not seem like a tough decision, but it is a very tough decision to me. My labor with Jif is something that I really don't want to repeat. My epidural never worked, 18 hours of labor, 4 hours of pushing, vacuum extraction, cut up baby, fevers for both me and him, bladder problems for me, and painful recovery, 10 pound baby. So I would prefer to have an induction before I would get to the 10 pound baby point. However, I don't want an induction. I would prefer her to come naturally. Inductions raise the chances of C-Section, and I really don't want a C-section. I am praying that she just comes before I have to make that decision. But I am confident that even if I have to make that decision, everything will turn out ok. I am so excited to meet my baby girl. I am also happy to spend these last few days with Jif as my little baby. Soon he won't be the littlest baby anymore, there will be a littler one in the house. That will be an adjustment. I wonder if he will have problems with having to share his mama.
We had a great Thanksgiving that we were able to spend with my in-laws. My husband's brother got engaged to a great girl, so we are really excited! Now I won't be the only sister-in-law, and maybe one day Jif can have some cousins. Yesterday we went mini-golfing in hopes to induce labor (it worked with Jif), but nothing happened. Jif did a pretty good job however of hitting the ball into the hole, and I beat my husband once again. We went to Cafe Rio afterwards, put Jif to bed, and my husband and I enjoyed some alone time afterwards and drank really yummy hot chocolate afterwards. It was a great day. Today is my husband's birthday, but he has been studying all day. I am wondering if I can get him to have some fun time today too, but the law student life is pretty demanding. He's doing great though. Next time I post I should have a baby girl to show you all.

September September

September September September. I'm glad it's October. September was good, but it was hard too. My computer crashed-losing lots of pictures, so I'm not going to post any now because I have been using my husband's computer to upload them and he isn't home right now.

Here are the events:

We worked our first week as secondaries (phone answerers) for our job as apartment coordinators. Let me tell you, it was harder than I thought it would be. I compounded the hardness by not sleeping the night before I went on duty (due to pregnancy discomfort), and for the first two days of work, when people would call during the middle of the night I had a hard time going back to sleep. By the end of our work week I had a cold, but I could tell it wasn't the contageous kind, just the kind that you get from being so run down that your immune system quits. It took me a few days to get over that.

My husband and I went on a fabulous date to see Inception and then we went to a 50's diner and got burgers and milk shakes. We had the most amazing Snickers milk shake. They made it with chocolate ice cream, butterscotch, peanut butter, and nuts all blended up. Inception was really good. My husband and I differ on the interpretation of the end. SPOILER! I think the top kept spinning, Josh thinks it was slowing down. It was great to go on a date with my husband. He is so fun and my best friend in every way. It has been a long time since we have been able to go out alone, without the munchkin, and without a boss/potential employer eating with us. It was nice. The only problem with dates with my husband is that they always leave me wanting more.

My husband has been super diligent with his schedule this week. He is making me his drill sargeant (which I have a natural talent for- go figure). He tells me all of his goals for the day and then he writes his progress hourly on a google doc we created. I am so proud of him for using his time so wisely and effectively. Hopefully since he is being so effective, we can use the extra time for another date that I am craving. My husband is currently getting ready for Moot Court in a few weeks. It is a competition where he gets to practice his litigating skills. I am really excited for him. I love to see him develop as a lawyer.

Jif is such a sweet heart. He has learned how to say many more words. He still doesn't speak very clearly, so I doubt that you would understand what he is saying. My mom says that I was the same way at his age and now I talk too much. So I guess this temporary communication problem probably isn't harming him. He loves to say "I love you" except he says "I la la you". He loves to give his stuffed animals kisses on the lips. He will even pretend to give us lip kisses, but as soon as we get close he dodges the kiss and puts his stuffed animal to our lips instead. We feel so shafted when he does that. But I just hope that he keeps that trick up his sleeve for all those girls in high school that will be knocking at our door. One of his funniest sayings is when we say prayers he always ends it with a huge "AAAAAAYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEE-MEHHHHHHHHHHH" otherwise known as "amen". We don't know where he learned it, but it's hillarious. He was very good through conference this week. He would repeat little words that he heard them say such as the aforementioned amen, peace, Jesus, and a few other words here and there. We got his Halloween costume, he is going to be Robby the Robot. Robby is his favorite stuffed animals and he thinks his costume is super cool.It's funny how much kids love dressing up. He loves to pretend to cook. I have decided that he needs a play kitchen for Christmas. I dropped the hint to my parents. He loves to pretend to cook and eat his creations. He is a very obedient boy. He always puts himself in time out when he gets in trouble. All I say is "Jif, do you need to go to time out?" and he walks himself to his room, sits down on the ground, starts to cry, and as soon as he calms himself down, he lets himself out of time out and behaves wonderfully. Oh, I hope that this habit lasts, but I know it probably won't. He also loves to help mommy do chores, such as putting the silverware away.

Speaking of mommy, I'm doing great. Reese is doing great. I am feeling big and sore and sleep doesn't come as easily as it once did. But other than that I have energy and I feel good. I am continuing to exercise (speed walk) most days of the week. However, whenever I do that I am particularly broken and sore for the rest of the day. It feels as though my hips want to detach from my legs. My little sister is graduating from massage school this week and I just really think that it is unfair that she lives 500 miles away. I put up with her for 21 years and now she decides to live far away from me, when I really need her? How unfair. Ok, ok, I miss her for lots of other reasons too. I wish I could be there for her graduation, but I am a little too far along in this pregnancy to travel that far. It's hard to believe that by the end of this month, if I went into labor- they wouldn't stop me. I don't think it's going to be like that though. I bet it will be pretty close to November 30th. Just close enough to Thanksgiving to make us really confused and unable to make plans.
So that's it for now. We have some really fun things coming up this month. I'll keep you posted.

Root Beer is Gross!

Tonight we had a big tantrum when we tried to put Jif to bed.  He cried so hard that he vomited by his bedroom door.  We took him out, cleaned him up, fed him some yogurt and then we realized what caused this tantrum.  Lately my husband has been putting Jif to bed and my husband makes sure that “Robby”, “Lion”, “Doggie”, and “Bear” are all in bed with Jif.  Today when I put Jif to bed I only left Robby with him.  He was throwing a tantrum because he wanted ALL of his stuffed friends to be with him.  We put him back to bed with all his stuffed friends and he went right to sleep. My husband has done a VERY bad thing in putting all the stuffed friends to bed with Jif.  Now if one of them ever goes missing or gets damaged we are in big trouble.

On a lighter note, as a family we went and got fish tacos at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos while waiting for a job interview to start for my husband.  We also got a big root beer.  We decided to give Jif his first sip of root beer.  This is what resulted:

Root Beer is Gross!

P.S.  The husband made the decision.  Munger it is!

Happenings

Well I have a lot of updating to do on this blog from vacations and pictures, but I will do that later, right now I will post what we have been up to lately

1. Jif is 19 months old.  He has started nursery and loves it.  His teachers tell us that he is very well behaved and he never cries when we leave him (good thing or bad thing?)  He says tons of words, but most of them he doesn’t say very clearly.  They include “good job”, “thank you”, “yummy”, “Robby” (his stuffed robot), “Doggy”, “Bear”, “Sheep” (he thinks our iphone is a sheep because of a flashcard game that he plays), “Casey” (his favorite person who just happens to be his Uncle), “Mommy”, “Daddy”, “Caden”, “Night night”, “poo poo”, “pee pee”, “juice”, “smoothie”, “milk”, “cracker”, “more”, “no”(his all time favorite word), “mine” (his second favorite word), “Jesus”, “Scriptures”, “Amen”, “baby”, “sister”, the numbers 2,3, and 9, and the letters A, B, C, D, E, O, P, T, and Z, “Sesame Street” “ball" and many more that I’m not remembering off the top of my head.
2. Jif loves to have random dance parties.  Often times he will initiate them with his friends at the playgroup and we will witness two kids dancing at the playground with absolutely no words to be heard.  Jif loves organizing.  His favorite way to play is to get all of the toys from a box and put them one at a time on the couch, or on mommy’s lap.  Jif is starting to learn how to pretend.  Yesterday he was pretending to eat something out of a cup using a brush.  He would dip the brush into the cup and put the brush in his mouth saying “yummy, mmm”.
3. Jif is becoming more affectionate day by day.  He loves cuddling with mommy and gives kisses on the lips and hugs all the time.  He also likes to drag me by the pant leg to a certain area of the room and then point at something that he wants me to look at or get for him.
4. So it’s about time that we give the baby inside of my an alias.  We will call her Reese, to go with the Peanut Butter theme.  Reese is doing good and being very healthy.  She loves to kick and keeps up mommy at night time, which is her favorite time to be awake (bad sign).
5.  Reese is measuring almost 2 weeks ahead of schedule.  Just like Jif did, but luckily I found a good doctor who will induce me early.  I will know for sure this month when I will be induced but for now I would guess the Monday before Thanksgiving or the monday right after.  It’s nice to know that it will be November instead of December.  And yes, I have been tested for diabetes 3 times now and my numbers are always way way way below the threshold, I’m not even close to having it.
6.  Reese is helping me to gain a little bit too much weight.  Last month I gained 8 pounds, which is ok because I had only gained 5 pounds in the entire pregnancy up to that point, but now I am speed walking every day to make sure that I don’t keep up on the 8 pounds a month trend.
7.  We have Reese’s first and middle names picked out for sure.  But we are still fighting about which order they should be in.
8.  I have been busy being Relief Society President in our ward.  It is very tiring, but very worth it.  I have always loved the feeling of being completely worn out from serving God all day.  Things were really hard at first as I figured out my leadership style and worked through the Summer with hardly anyone permanently residing in our ward.  Things are getting better now as I have grown and changed a lot.  Often times I feel like I am a huge chunk of coal trying to turn into a diamond and the process really hurts.  But looking back I am so happy at the progress I am making at changing and becoming better that I feel that it is definitely worth it.
9.  My husband is finished with interviewing for his next summer’s internship.  He got offers to a few firms, two of which include his top two choices.  One is Munger Tolles in L.A. and the other is Irell and Manella in Orange County.  Both firms would be amazing opportunities.   Both firms have really great hours and you get to work on really awesome cases all the time because they turn away all the boring cases.  Munger Tolles has been ranked #1 on the Am Law top 100 for the last 3 years.  It is a tough decision but we hope to make it by the end of this week.  And if he does well with the firm over the Summer there is a good chance he will get a permanent job there
10.  Other than that he has been keeping himself very busy picking a law review topic and catching up in all the classes he missed during interview week.

Those are the latest updates.  Stay tune for all the catch-up.

A New Night-time Routine

So the week before Jif turned 18 months old, he had an unfortunate little incident.  For three days prior to this Jif had decided not to take a nap.  It was understandable though, we had company over and had been out of town.  However, we were home now and this had to stop.  Jif needed to start taking naps again.  He is so cranky when he doesn’t nap.  So I went back to what always works: letting him cry for an hour or so until he realizes I am serious and falls asleep. Except this time he didn’t fall asleep.  About 45 minutes into the crying it out I heard something fall from Jif’s room.  I figured that he somehow toppled over the little plastic toy drawer next to his crib.  The next thing I hear is knocking on his door.  I run into his room and he is still crying but was right next to his bedroom door on the floor.  My 17 month old had climbed out of his crib on his own.  Now I have seen a lot of cribs that I would understand kids being able to climb out of, but this crib is not one of those cribs.  It was from Babies R’ Us, high quality, deep, the matress was at the lowest position, and no toys were in the crib with him.  I don’t think that I could climb out of a crib that was those proportions to my body, but somehow he did it.  It shouldn’t surprise me.  He walked for the first time at 9 months, the boy knows how to move.  Well I was really concerned because Jif was acting weird after I went and got him.  He wouldn’t walk and he just wanted to cuddle (very unlike him).  I was afraid he landed on his head and got a concussion.  I was on the phone with the doctor ready to bring him in, when he started acting normal again.  The doctor said maybe he was acting weird because the fall scared him.  That night we decided to switch him to the toddler bed.  It was too scary for me to think he could climb out of his crib and hurt himself.  Thankfully we already had an awesome toddler bed that was handed down to us by our wonderful friends. That night Jif slept in the bed.  He did alright, the transition was surprisingly easy.  By the third day in the toddler bed he would fall asleep as soon as we laid him down for both naps and nighttime and would sleep through the night.  However, a week ago Jif discovered something fun and new.  He discovered that he is not confined to the bed and he can get up and play for however long he wants.  Now at naptime I hear him playing quietly in his room for at least an hour before he falls asleep and he often falls asleep on the floor.  At nighttime the last few nights that we have checked on him, we have found him like this.  In the dark of night he has quietly gathered his toys and laid them on his bed next to him before he went to sleep.  What a character!

Jif’s Pick

Jif isn’t the most picky eater, but he is 19 months which means he does his fair share of being picky.  This week, however, Jif found his favorite food.  Trader Joe’s White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese Shells.  He loves loves loves them.  We got them as a sample at trader Joes last week and he cried screaming “More more more” all the way home after the sample was gone.  I gave in and bought a few boxes and today he had it for lunch.  He used a spoon for half of it but liked it so much that he ditched the spoon and went for the more efficient way: hands.  The entire time he was eating them he said “mmmm,  mmmm, mmmm”.  The funny thing is that he is not a fan of other macaroni and cheeses, just this one.  I guess I will just have to keep this as a staple in our house and feed it to him when he is a good boy. It’s not too much of a sacrifice, Mommy and Daddy like it a lot too.

pure exhilaration

So this post is several months late, but I need to start catching up, so here it goes. So a few months ago I saw that the Santa Monica Pier had half off tickets to their amusement park on groupon so I bought them for when my sister came into town.  My husband and my sister got to go on the big roller coasters together.  Jif even went on a few choice rides, such as the ferris wheel.  We all shared a funnel cake topped with strawberries and ice cream and went to Bucca di Beppo’s for dinner.  It was a great day and it was lots of fun showing my little sister the town.
Here are some pictures of pure exhilaration as Jif discovered what a ferris wheel does.