Our little man is 7 months old!

Happy Valentines Day

My Valentines!!

I Love My Boys!

Is it??

Spring yet? I am ready to spend time outside, and to go visit the park, and all things outdoors. We went to our storage unit and moved all the camping gear up to the front so that it is easily accessible! We also got the spring artwork out of storage to put up around the house. I'm ready so now Spring better come soon :)

It Begins...

What begins you may ask? Well Matthew is not crawling officially yet but he has mastered rolling and scooting over to the toy bins, and pulling out the toys. He is working hard to figure out how to crawl, he can get onto his knees and rock back and forth. So now it is just a matter of learning how to coordinate his hands and feet. It is exciting to watch him figure out how to move and play.

a LONG process...

The past few months I have been really thinking hard about making changes in my life, mainly habits surrounding food and exercise. I know those are two very large parts of life, but they are two parts of my life that I have been consistently falling short of my goals. I want to improve my diet and exercise regularly but I have not done much about it, at least not much consistently.
Then last night I went to a relief society activity where they had a few classes, I went to a nutrition and exercise class, and a massage class. Much of what we talked about regarding exercise I already knew, and I learned a lot of that information in high school while running cross country. As far as nutrition goes I feel a little more informed but still feel like I am reaching in the dark as I try to figure out how to help myself and my family make better food choices.
I went home feeling like I CAN make the next step, like it was time to stop thinking and talking and to just DO. I can talk about it forever and just continue feeling like crap, or I can make the changes that I want to make and start feeling better. This is not going to be easy, I am going to have to train myself to get up in the morning and go exercise (I did this morning!), and I am going to have to re-train myself and my eating habits. I was thinking about nutrition and last night it was said that "food is functional" and that phrase is really important to remember. Food has a purpose and it is to fuel your body. If you think about a computer, when you buy software, most people are not going to go out and buy software that makes their computer run terrible. You are going to shop around and find the best software that you can get for your computer to keep in running properly. That is how I need to think about food. A treat now and then is okay, even fats and sugars play a role in the human body functioning properly. It is about balance and moderation, and I think bigger than that is planning. Sitting out and looking at the schedule for the week and planning a menu, and scheduling in exercise ect.  
This is my new goal, I am going to take action so that I can feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally. I am going to start taking care of myself, I need to take care of myself, so I can take better care of my family and my new business. I am posting this so that I will be held accountable for my plan, I am going to design a blog where I will post my menu, and exercise journal. I am in the worst shape I have ever been in, and I am going to fix that!

We are OPEN!

  Now Enrolling!

                           

Stay ‘n’ Play Preschool and Home Daycare

 Offering quality affordable childcare and preschool for children 6 weeks to 12 years of age

• Offering childcare from 6:30-9:30 pm select evenings during the month (Date Nights)

• Full time, part time, and drop in care available

• Preschool curriculum for children 3-5 years

• Large outdoor play area

• Healthy meals

• Small group size with lots of one on one attention

Feel free to check out our website: staynplaypreschool.webs.com

Or call Stephanie for more information at:

(509)332-5328

Sleep, will we see you again?

This week we have said goodbye to the days of swaddling Matthew and having him fall asleep quietly on his back. This is the picture of the first time he got out of his swaddle this week. I love that he is cuddling with his glow seahorse, we just had to get a picture of him!
This new found freedom of his is not so good for Chris and I, our good nights of sleep seem like a distant memory. I must say I was really enjoying them. Oh well they will be back and I will be here to welcome them back with open arms.
Matthews sixth month has been an adventure, our little guy is moving all over. It is so much fun to watch him roll and scoot around the floor. It is also fun to hear him laugh, and play with us and his toys. He has become a food hog, he loves to eat every food we have offered him. He really is a fun kid, and soon he will learn to sleep soundly with out being swaddled... Very very soon (I hope)..

Busy Busy Busy

Matthew and Santa December 2010 (5 months)

Matthew Christmas 2010 opening his Christmas present with the help of his cousins

Matthew had fun in the Cozy Coupe for the daycare

It has been awhile since I last posted. We had a wonderful Christmas, we were able to spend it in Nevada and California with Chris' family. It was great to see everyone and to have Matthew meet the rest of his family. For the first part of our trip we drove down to Carson City and spent a week with Linda, while we were there we were able to spend a day in Reno and get Matthews picture taken with Santa, and we also drove over to see Matthews great grandparents and great great grandpa in California.
The day after Christmas we drove down to Sacramento California to Jeremy and Heathers house and we had a big family Christmas celebration there. It was a full house, but very nice to see everyone. We opened presents that night, however Matthew slept through present time so he opened his the next morning.
Then we drove up to Susanville, California and spent the rest of our trip with John and Diana, Dan, Mandy and her kids.
We are not able to make it to the area very often and it was nice to be able to spend a long time visiting with family. We had a great Christmas!

During the trip I was also fighting a loosing battle with Mastitis- yuck. I went through about 4 rounds of antibiotics including a shot of antibiotic from a urgent care clinic. Nothing seemed to help. When we got back and had another round of antibiotics not help, I went for an ultrasound to see if there was anything else going on. Luckily there was no absess or anything like that, however they did want a follow up ultrasound in a few months and that required me to stop breastfeeding and switch Matthew to formula.
I was sad to have to switch him but at the same time I was really ready for the constant pain to go away. Matthew handled the switch really well, I think there are times when he still misses nursing but he seems happy for the most part. I also am not in pain anymore which is very nice.
Before we left for our trip we also found Cooper a new home with a very nice family. He is doing really well, and has kids, cats, and another dog to play with. I saw him yesterday and he is doing really well and I am glad that we were able to find him a nice home!
We also are very excited because we are now licensed to run our home daycare! This has been something that I have been planning for so long and now I am finally able to start advertising, and hopefully caring for some children.
That is what we have been up to, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a great start to 2011!

Tiny Toes

Our sweet boy is 5 months old today! What a sweet boy, we love him so much.

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Snow has definitely been the most recent theme in our world. It snowed in Pullman the day before we were suppose to drive to Gig Harbor, luckily that snow melted before we had to leave. But then the craziest thing happened because Gig Harbor got a bunch of snow Thanksgiving week, very strange for western Washington. I think it is very cool that Matthew's first Thanksgiving was a snowy one!
We had a great holiday, we spent the week staying with my Grandparents and a few nights with my parents. It was very fun to spend time with them and to watch them play with Matthew. Like I said before we had snow the week of Thanksgiving and if you are from Western Washington you know that snow shuts down everything, the whole area just slows down, so we had a few days of down time where we couldn't go anywhere safely so we just stayed put. One night there was a bad windstorm and it knocked the power out, and it was freezing cold outside, roads were terrible so we decided to stay with my parents because we were already there (we found out the next day that we couldn't have left anyways because a tree had fallen across the road and taken out the power line). That night was freezing cold in the house by the end of it- we wrapped Matthew up in a few blankets and put a Beanie on him and his poor cheeks were still cold. That was a very memorable night. On Thanksgiving Dan (Chris's Brother) came and spent a few days with us- we were very happy to be able to see him also! We had 2 dinners, my Mom made a dinner at their house that my Grandpa Byron (Mom's Dad) came to - he doesn't do well with big groups and people he doesn't know. Then later that day we went to my Grandparents (Dad's Parents) for Thanksgiving dinner with the family. It was a delicious dinner and great to see almost everyone there. Matthew got to spend time with his aunts, uncles, and cousins and I got to spend an evening relaxing while everyone else held him :) Then Friday we hit some black Friday sales and picked up a few deals on items we needed for the Daycare. We left on Saturday for Pullman geared up for a long snowy drive across the state, luckily most of the drive was great. about 1/4 of it was icy roads and heavy fog - we were very happy to be home by the end of that drive! Here are some pictures...

Matthew playing with his Grandpa on Thanksgiving

First time trying rice cereal

Sleeping with Daddy after his first hockey game, it was late and he managed to fall asleep despite all the noise!

4 months playing on his tummy

Matthew and his Uncle Dan after Thanksgiving Dinner

4 Months of Matthew

I just went and visited a new mom from my Ward here in Pullman and it brought me back and made me remember just how Thankful I am for my little Matthew. We all talked about our delivery stories, it is like being part of a club, because now I have a delivery story and this whole new understanding of what other people go through. Before I had Matthew I did not fully grasp what it meant to have a baby, When I was 8 I had seen a baby born. Still I don't think it is an experience that you can witness and understand, it is something that until you go through it is still a mystery. I am thankful for the opportunity that I had to have Matthew. I learned so much about myself in my 8 hours of labor, I learned how strong I can be. I also learned that I am really good at censoring my language even when in extreme pain, I learned that I deal with pain very internally, I don't want to talk to anyone when I am in pain, but I don't like to be alone either. Mostly I learned that I can follow through with a decision. I had decided that I didn't want to have an epidural and even when i was in so much pain and just wanted it to go away, the logical part of me was still in tack and I remembered why I made my decision, and that no matter how much it hurt, it would be over soon enough. I just kept telling myself that I could do it, that I was strong enough. I keep thinking back to this experience and I am grateful because I was really there for my child's birth, I felt like I really experienced it, it is hard to put into words, but it means the world to me that I was able to experience labor and delivery in its entirety. I really hope that next time around it will be entirely natural, that they will not have to induce labor. I would really like to have a natural birth experience.

Now that I have finished reliving that wonderful experience, the real topic that I wanted to talk about was the 4 months since Matthew was born. Being a new mom is a much more challenging experience than I thought it would be. I'm not sure why I thought it would just be a breeze, I pictured this as being a smooth transition, that I would adjust and just love the whole thing. I didn't take into account that I would get no sleep for the first 36 hours of his life, for some reason I thought the hospital would want new moms to sleep. Funny huh? I also didn't think about the fact that because I was breastfeeding that in the beginning just going to the store was hard, and you had to time it just right because the baby would be hungry again. I really just didn't grasp what it meant to have a new born. I think I expected an infant, not a newborn, I am really loving being a mom now that Matthew is older. The last month has been wonderful! Don't get me wrong I have loved that little boy the whole time, but that doesn't make the experience any easier. It was not that hard really, it just pushed me to the breaking point more than I have ever been before. 

In the last month Matthew has learned to sleep through the night! What a blessing that is. We learned a new swaddling technique and he sleeps like a charm. If you look up "miracle swaddle blanket" on you tube it shows the basic process. Only we didn't buy that blanket we use a thin receiving blanket and then a normal blanket. Then we went through 3 days of crying it out. Now that boy sleeps like a charm most nights. He is ready for bed between 7:30 and 8;30 most night and sleeps until 4 or 5 am and then eats and goes back to sleep until 8:30am! I love being able to sleep again! He also has learned in the last month to play with us more, and he is smiling more. Chris and Matthew make noises back and forth to each other, it is really cool to watch because Chris will make a noise and then Matthew tries so hard to do the same thing, a lot of times he is smiling and can't do it because he is smiling but it is so much fun! I am writing a book today so I will end it here. Basically I am so Thankful to be a Mommy, I am thankful for the past 4 months it has been so wonderful, challenging but wonderful, and I would not trade it for anything. I love Matthew and my Husband! Chris has been the best Daddy and so supportive to me. I would have gone crazy without him! I have so much to be Thankful for this holiday season. It just makes me smile :)         

Matthew and the Fence...

Matthew 3.5 months.

He is getting really strong and we often find him scooting around.

Look at him suck on that bottom lip! He started that in the last week or so.

Working on the gate, the last part of the fence to be built.

Day one: Ammon and Chris digging the post holes with the "Earth Drill".

Starting to put slats on

Chris with his favorite tool of the project

The finished project!

It has been a busy week, and an even busier weekend. Matthew is doing so well and growing fast, he will be 4 months soon. I am excited to take him into his 4 month checkup and see how much he has grown. I also think he is ready to start eating some baby food, so we will talk to the Doctor about that. I hear such conflicting information about the subject. Some say 4 months, some say not till 6 months... What do you think? We have tried a little with him and he likes it, but I don't want to hurt him somehow... Not sure. Chris thinks that he is ready and we should just feed him... 
The big project has been getting the fence in! We have been planning and trying to figure out how to do this since we moved it. We were going to do chain link, but that ended up being way more involved and more expensive, so we decided on a wood fence. When we were thinking about the chain link fence we looked into having a company come install it because we don't have the tools or know-how to put up a chain link fence. However the company that we actually got to come give us a quote wanted almost $2400 to do the job! It is only 1 gate and a little over 100ft of fence. So then we talked to some people from our ward and they said they would be willing to help us. We priced the difference between chain link and wood and found a great deal on materials. 
We could not have done this without everyone who helped us. We need to Thank Chris's Mom and brother Dan for loaning us the money for materials, and all the guys who came and gave up a Friday and Saturday to help install the fence. This was a big project and one that had to be done in order to be licensed as a home daycare, we are now almost ready. Soon we will have an income! I am hoping to be able to start enrolling kids in January of 2011!

Happy Halloween!

Lil' Picasso and the Pumpkin

Matthew is 3 months! (on Friday the 15th)

I'm a little early but Chris and I were able to get some fun pictures of Matthew over the past week or so. He has really started to like being on his tummy, he also likes this funny toy well he likes chewing on the antennas.
3 month stats:
24 inches
12 pounds 5 ounces

 This is the funny toy, it is like an alien or something. He loves to put that antenna in his mouth (notice the blue ball in his mouth).

 Matthew really likes to chew on his arm (this is how he gave himself the hickey before).

 Tummy time for Chris and Matthew! 

 I think the flash startled him. He is getting really strong and can hold himself up for a long time!

Church Responds to HRC Petition

Church Responds to HRC Petition

This is a well written article by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints about the church's position related to the recent bullying and humiliation of a young man that led to him committing suicide. They explain very well the LDS Position on same-sex relationships, it is very nice to have it written out so clearly. I have friends who are involved in such relationships and we talked about this very same position. We are still good friends but we each know where we stand on the matter, it did not change my love for her.

It is sad to see all the serious bullying that has been occurring. It breaks my heart that people feel they have the right to treat others so poorly, and that those being bullied feel so helpless and hopeless. I just wish that they would know that it does get better. People will forget mistakes and choices that you have made, life can be wonderful again!

Splash time Oh I mean Bath time!!

We have been having lots of fun watching Matthew grow. He is changing constantly and learning new things. This first picture is of him at about two and a half months on the couch and the second one is from the same day, before you look at it you should know that he has developed this habit of sucking on his arm or wrist when he is not sucking on his fists. Well on this day he managed to give himself his first hickey!
Bath TIME!! I love giving Matthew a bath lately, he just has so much fun kicking his feet and splashing. He has figured out that if he kicks both feet together it makes an even bigger splash. You might be able to see that sometimes he is trying so hard to kick and splash that he has to stick his tongue out. He also sticks his tongue out a little like that when he smiles. I also had to take the TP off its holder and move it to the other side of the bathroom because it gets very wet from all the splashing.



It has been fairly uneventful lately we have been spending lots of time studying (Chris and I'm helping him), and getting the daycare stuff done. I still have lots left to do, and the orientation is less than two weeks away! Hopefully we will be opening Stay 'n' Play Preschool and Home Daycare by January 2011. It would be nice to have an income again! Matthew will be 3 months next Friday so I should be posting some 3 month pictures soon!

Matthew 2 Months!

Here are some pictures of our handsome little guy! We love playing with him now he has the cutest little grins and has really started babbling a lot. At his check up he was 11.4 pounds and 23 inches long, growing like a weed. Here are some pictures of the little guy :)