Sigh of relief

A couple of weeks ago, I took Oliver to his 4 month check up (for my own future reference, he was 26 inches and 15 lb 4 oz). While listening to his heart, the doctor nonchalantly asks, "have I heard a murmur on him before?" Almost instantaneously, I felt the worry and fear welling up inside of me. She then started to explain, "it's really just an extra whooshing sound. It could mean that his heart is full of holes that shouldn't be there, or it could be nothing." Yup, that definitely made me feel better.


So, I've spent the last 2 weeks worrying and trying my hardest to not look up heart murmurs online (because, seriously, webmd could make someone believe they were about to die because of a bloody nose!). We FINALLY had our appointment with the cardiologist today. It is a surreal experience to see your darling little 4 month old boy hooked up to the EKG machine and getting an ultrasound of his heart.

After a nearly 2 hour doctor's appointment, the doctor finally told us that our little man is totally fine!! I feel like I can breathe for the first time in weeks. He has what they call an "innocent murmur" and it will probably go away with time.

I'm so grateful for modern medicine! I was reading the other day that 100 years ago, half of all kids didn't live past age 5. I'm also grateful that I've been blessed with such wonderful kids and that they're healthy and thriving.

Cecily is 2!

Our awesome little lady is 2 years old!

I have to admit, her 2nd birthday was way more exciting than her 1st, because she was SO excited! At 1 she didn't really know what was going on, but this year, she was all over the idea. She woke up to streamers hanging in her doorway and pancakes shaped like the letter "C" and the number "2"! She loved it! We went to have lunch with Daddy at work and spent the afternoon at the park and came home to watch her favorite movie of the month, Tangled. :)

We had a panda party because she LOVES her stuffed panda. We had a panda pinata, "Hello Panda" cookies, and panda cupcakes! 

She didn't get blow out her candles, because she was a little mesmerized. 

She got a lot of awesome presents, including this amazing tricycle that she can't figure out how to ride... haha. 

Cecily loves:

her panda (still)

frozen peas (still) and corn

her butterfly wings (and she demands that I wear mine any time she wears hers)

marbleworks

books

playgrounds

Tangled

Monsters Inc.

Beauty and the Beast

songs, her favorites right now are:

Wheels on the Bus, 

Do You See What I See? and,

Honey Honey from the Mamma Mia soundtrack

Super Why

running and jumping

giving Oliver kisses and helping change his diapers

picking pecans (we have a pecan tree right next to our house, and she's obsessed!)

hummus

raisins and pretzels

This kid is pretty amazing. She can name all the letters of the alphabet (capitals, not lower case) and has a ridiculous vocabulary. She loves to pick up (most of the time), and we rarely have a problem getting her to eat vegetables. I have been so blessed to have such an easy kid! 

The thing we've been working on lately is her shyness. When she's with a bunch of other kids, she just sits there and won't join in with the playing/singing/dancing/whatever. I know it's probably just part of her personality and I can't change that, but I do hope she grows out of it, at least a little bit. She's insanely clingy to me and I want her to be able to branch out and make friends. 

Pecans!!

It is adorable to watch them interact with each other!

Crunchy granola.

My mom lovingly calls me a crunchy granola hippie. It's kind of true, though. I use cloth diapers on my kids. My favorite hobby is thrift store shopping and reconstructing the clothes I find. I have a garden. One of my favorite things about shopping at Aldi is that they don't load everyone up on plastic grocery bags. Heck, I even make my own laundry detergent. (And isn't it great that all of these awesome things that are good for the environment are also SO much cheaper than the alternatives??)

I think it's carrying on to my daughter...

Cecily loves tofu, hardly ever eats meat, devours green beans and broccoli. She loves to be outside and help in the garden. A few days ago, she ran to the window and pointed outside and yelled, "TREES!! I love trees!!" 

I'm so proud to be raising the next generation of tree huggers!

On a related note: on the way home from my grandma's house today, I saw the very starts of a rainbow. Jonathan and I had been talking about how much I liked them last week when we saw a tiny one. Well, in the 30-ish minutes it took us to get home, this rainbow turned into the most impressive rainbow I've ever seen! Of course, the pictures don't do it any justice at all. It was so bright and wonderful and HUGE! 

Oliver!

I'm a little behind on this, buuuuuut.... we had a little boy! 

Oliver Preston Ward was born on July 20. He was quite the little chunk at 8 lbs 8 ounces. Labor wasn't too bad. I got induced again. With Cecily, I got an epidural expecting a semi-pain free birth, but it was nothing of the sort. I've wondered since then if the epidural didn't work, or (worse) maybe I'm just a huge pansy that thought it was ridiculously awful even with the epidural. Well, I'm happy to report that this time when I got the epidural, I didn't feel anything! It was awesome! Little man was born after about 7 hours of labor, and literally 4 minutes of pushing... 

My doctor was pretty hilarious. Jonathan was gone for a lot of this pregnancy and stayed home with Cecily for the appointments that he was here for, so he had never met my doctor before. As soon as Dr. Sarmini walked in, he looked at Jonathan, looked at Jonathan's shoes, and said, "Those are ugly. Nurse, get him some surgical booties to cover them up before I come in here next." 

(For those of you who don't know, Jonathan was wearing his favorite shoes that I lovingly call his "frog feet". They are ugly. They look like this.

Yup, ugly. But, I'm so glad I married a guy who is comfortable enough with his weirdness to be able to handle the teasing. )

We absolutely adore this little guy! So far, we think that he looks almost exactly like Jonathan (and Cecily) when they were babies, except that he has my giant mouth and my skin tone. I REALLY hope his skin stays more on the tan side like mine. Cecily's skin is like porcelain and it is super sensitive, so I'm hoping that Oliver's is a little less troublesome than that. He is an amazing baby. Pretty much, he's either sleeping or eating. He only cries when he's hungry, and it's not usually very loud. He puts up with Cecily and her craziness and doesn't even wake up when she's running around the house like a maniac and yelling. 

Here he is a few days after coming home from the hospital. (and the coolest quilt ever!)

Cecily loves Oliver and frequently sits on the couch, pulls my boppy around her waist, holds her arms out and says, "Hold him?" and gives me her sweetest little smile until I put Oliver in her lap so she can give him a million kisses on the forehead. We also discovered yesterday that having her hold him during sacrament meeting is a good way to keep her quiet. :)

And here's a nice little comparison shot of him and Cecily at about 1 month old.

And here he is last night. He's not smiling consistently yet, so this is the look I get most often.

And just for funsies.. I stuck Cecily in this shirt for sleeping last week and remembered that I took pictures of her in it last summer when we made it at "Cousin Camp", so I had to do a comparison picture with her, too. It's crazy how much she's changed in a year, but is also so much the same. And, those giant blue eyes are still as wonderful as ever!! 

Cecily: 18 months!

Our little girl is 18 months old! 

She is quite the character. She talks all the time and can say about 50 words consistently and says sentences. My favorite one lately: when Jonathan isn't here she says "I wanna see my dadda". And her new favorite word is "baby". She HAS to point out any baby that we see. I'm hoping she'll still be excited when we have a new baby in the house in a few months. 

She loves:

dancing 

Party Rock Anthem

singing songs 

Itsy Bitsy Spider
Popcorn Popping
and doing the hand motions to both

mooching food off of whoever she can

saying prayers 

eating

her cousin, Shelby

swings and slides

frozen peas

necklaces

ice

bananas

Elmo

shoes

cats

babies

her panda

being outside

washing her hands

She doesn't love:

naptime

most meat

 not getting her way

clips or headbands in her hair

diaper changes

 She is very stingy with her cuddling and kisses, but when she's in the right mood, she's very sweet.

She's transitioned to her toddler bed really well, and spends at least an hour every morning playing quietly in her room after she wakes up. It's awesome, because I get to sleep in and I have been exhausted this pregnancy! 

She's been going on the potty a couple of times a day for months now, and is getting better at telling us when she needs to go. I'm kind of just following her lead on the whole thing, and it seems to be working out ok. Eventually, I'll have to get more serious about it. But, I think she'll be fine when the time comes.

Here's her messy face after picking (eating) blackberries at my parents' house. She LOVED it.

We absolutely love this little girl!

Our House: The outside.

In honor of this month being the one year anniversary of us buying our house, I'm going to do a few before and after posts about it.

We made a list of things that we had to have, and things that we'd like to have in a house and went out with our realtor like a million times before we found this house.

Must-haves:
under $60k
3 bedrooms
2 bathrooms

Not too dilapidated

 Would-like-to-haves:
Big tree to put a swing in
Driveway wide enough for 2 cars
Big kitchen
Extra room in the garage for Jonathan to have a workshop

Our house has all of those, except for the tree for the swing. And, it was way under our budget, which is pretty awesome! And it has the coolest front door I've ever seen!

We bought our house on the cheap and have put a LOT of work into it. We're super proud of how awesome it's becoming. :)

The outside of the house is pretty much the same as it was a year ago. Once we get around to it, we're going to paint it something other than that weird yellow-beige color. We have added a couple of garden beds, but the plants in them are still very tiny. And we bought a flowering cherry tree to put in the front yard once it gets a little bigger. 

And here's now. Jonathan and his uncle replaced the ugly, broken sliding door with some pretty french doors. We just need to frame them out now...

And my uncle helped us frame out the back windows. It's hard to tell in that first picture, but before, there was just that expanding foam stuff and it was pretty yucky. Now, it's lovely! :)

There's still a lot more work to be done on the outside, because we've been mostly focused on the inside, which I'll write about later, once I actually take "after" pictures...

TARDIS!

Back in December, my little brother baked bread for some family function and showed up with flour ALL over his pants. When questioned about this, he sounded exasperated and said, "Well, none of the aprons are long enough for me!". Yup, by "little" brother, I mean my younger brother who is 6'6". Which means every apron at my parent's house comes barely below his waist. Lucky for me, Christmas was the next week and I had no idea what to get him. Now I knew! A stinkin' giant apron! I went to the store and saw the most perfect fabric and had a brilliant idea; The TARDIS flying through space!! Of course, then Jonathan surprised me with coming home for Christmas and we were super busy while he was here. Plus, I was still first trimester sick. And yeah, the apron didn't get completed for a very long while.

Meaning not until April.

But, I did finish it.

And it's awesome!


And yes, I painted the TARDIS on there. It took lots and lots of patience, but I LOVE it!


I also decided that for a little versatility, I'd make it reversible! So, the other side is Chewbacca's utility belt thing. It's not quite as cool, but it's still pretty nerdy.

Talking.

First off, we found out yesterday that we're having a boy! We are pretty dang excited! I love getting sonograms and watching them measure all the different bones and parts of the brain. Technology is really amazing! We haven't finalized our name choice, but we've got a pretty solid idea of what it's going to be. :)

The real reason for this post is that I FINALLY got a video of Cecily saying some words. Usually she gets really camera shy and runs away. If you're taking a video. She has definitely learned to smile for normal pictures!


So, here's her talking! I love how well she enunciates! :)

Camping!

The awesome view from our picnic table every morning.

Since I was a tiny kid, camping has been one of my favorite things! My family has been camping all over the U.S. and we've made some pretty amazing memories. The last campout I went on with my family was Spring Break of 2009 and my boyfriend accompanied us. Well, by the time we got home, he was no longer my boyfriend, but my fiancee, and NOW he's my husband (funny how that works..).

Well, that husband is FINALLY done with his training and is HOME! To celebrate, I planned a camping trip for us. We dropped Cecily off with her granny and headed to Benbrook Lake for 3 nights. The first night, the sky was dropping buckets of water on us, so we went out to eat and slept in the car. But, after the clouds cleared the next morning, it was gorgeous! We went hiking, played with fire, and played tons of Rummikub and Mancala (our 2 favorite games). We even attempted to play "crossword rummikub" and it was actually really fun!


This is the first campout that I've had to plan all of the food for, and I was a little stressed out about it. But, once it stopped raining and we were actually able to make a fire, the food was great! My go-to camp food is foil dinners (the classic ones, hamburger patty, carrots, and potatoes), but I decided to mix it up a little and try something new! I was really worried about how they were going to turn out, but it was fantastic!! So, I had to share the "recipe" (that I kind of just made up..)

(for 2 people)
2 chicken breasts
1 zucchini
2 yellow squash
1 bell pepper
2 carrots
spices of choice (we had garlic salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper)

To start, you need some nice hot coals in the firepit.

Slice the chicken up into small strips (for faster cooking), and slice all your veggies. We split all of this stuff into 3 different foil packets. Lay out some heavy duty foil, and put a layer of veggies down, then top with whatever spices you have. Next comes a layer of chicken and more spices, then another layer of veggies. Close up your foil, and wrap it up again in another layer. Then throw them on the fire! We did ours for 15 minutes on each side and they were amazing! The veggies were a little mushy, but not bad.

Next time, I think we might bring tortillas, refried beans, and salsa to go with it and have some camping fajitas! :)

Happy 3-year engagementversary, Jonathan!!!

Sewing!

I've been sewing for basically my whole life. At church, there's a "quilting group" that meets once a month, and I finally went a couple of weeks ago. My only experience with quilting was making a few quilt squares for our class quilt in 5th grade. I've discovered that it's not quite my cup of tea. It's WAY too precise. In my sewing I tend to remake old clothes into something cooler.

So, after an hour or so of worrying about whether or not my seams were exactly 1/4 in and lining up the fabric exactly right, I had an itch for my normal type of sewing. I saw a tutorial on pinterest awhile back (http://thisismeinspired.blogspot.com/2011/09/his-work-shirt-to-her-school-dress.html) to make a men's button-up shirt into a cute dress for a little girl! I dug through my Goodwill pile and found this.

It's one of my old shirts (bought at a thrift store of course, but then I decided I didn't like the color, but it would work for an experimental dress), but I figured I would still have plenty of fabric, because Cecily's not very big yet. Of course, I didn't feel motivated enough to actually look at the tutorial, so I just got one of the dresses she already has and used it as a basic pattern. It was fun! I gathered wherever I felt like, I chopped away at fabric without measuring, and I just went with the flow. This is what I came up with when I actually tried it on her.

Yeah, not so cute. I left the original bottom hem of the shirt, and it made it look awful. And the buttons did a weird gappy thing. Back to the drawing board! I found this bag of adorable eyelet trim at a thrift store a few months ago for $1, so I got that out to find something to fix the dress. After some more sewing and cutting, and putting a little snap in to fix the gap problem, voila!

I'm still not super in love with the color, but I do love it with the white trim! (It's hard to notice, but it's also got trim around the bottom.) And with those tights!! Anyway, I got tons of compliments on it at church on Sunday, so I guess it was a success!!

The Good Samaritan.

Tonight, I was watching this video of the parable of the good Samaritan that my church recently released. It's really fantastic and I am loving these Bible videos!

It got me thinking about a study I learned about in school. I looked it up to make sure I had my facts straight, because it was a few years ago. Darley and Batson did an experiment at Princeton University on undergrad divinity students. The students were told that they would have to walk to a different building and present an impromptu speech. There were a couple of variables: (1) they were told to either give a speech on employment opportunities after graduation, or the parable of the good Samaritan, and (2) they were told they were either late, had just enough time, or had a few extra minutes to get there. The kicker is, on their way to give the speech, they had to pass a man slumped over in an alleyway and clearly in need of assistance, and the study was set up to measure who actually stopped to help. Sadly, the thing that had the biggest impact on whether or not they stopped wasn't the speech topic, but the amount of time they had. One would hope that those students who are pondering on the good Samaritan would channel that charitable vibe and risk being a little late to their meeting in order to put the values taught in the parable into action. But, that's not human nature, I suppose.

And of course, all of this thinking has led to some introspection. Who am I not reaching out to in my life because I think I'm "too busy" or assume that they don't really need my help? How often am I focused so much on my petty life problems to not notice someone around me who is truly suffering and in need of a good friend? Perhaps it is human nature to hurry through life and care only about ourselves, but I really need to work harder to overcome that and reach out to other people and be more Christ-like.

Valentine's Day!

I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day. I mean, it's a nice day to remind people how much we love them, but it kind of bothers me that it's so forced. Husbands get in trouble for not bringing home flowers, but they didn't bring home flowers yesterday, and you didn't care then. Why should you care today, just because the calendar says so? I think that instead of a set holiday, we should all reach out every day to those we love, and do random things for our spouses (boyfriends, girlfriends, fiances, etc) at random times to let them know how much we love them! But, honestly, I'm not going to swoon because you stopped by a grocery store on your way home from work and bought me chocolates and flowers because you felt obligated. Though, I'm not really a flowers and chocolates kind of girl.. Last year Jonathan saw a waffle maker that makes heart-shaped waffles, then realized while checking out that it was a V-day thing, so he made me heart-shaped waffles for breakfast. But, he also does that on random occasions, too. And, I've always made him a cute little card and written mushy stuff in it, but he has a whole shoebox full of love notes from me. My mom says I "expect too much" or that I'm a grinch for not liking V-day. Maybe I do expect too much. Oh well.

So, I leave you all with a challenge! Pick a random wonderful thing to do for your significant other every week (at least). Have a date night and get all dressed up and go to a fancy restaurant, just because. Be spontaneous in your relationship and don't go by a calendar!

But, Jonathan, don't you dare ever forget my birthday. (Yes, my mom pointed out that this makes me a "hypocrite". But, seriously, birthdays are different. Right?)

What a mess!!!

Every now and again, whatever food I make happens to be REALLY messy. And when I'm in a fun mood, I just let Cecily go at it. Today was one of those days! One of Jonathan's favorite things about me is the ridiculous facial expressions I make sometimes... I guess it's safe to say that she is definitely my daughter!

Potty time!

A few weeks ago, I bought a toddler potty for Cecily and put it in her bathroom. She was only 13 months old, and not ready for potty training, but I just wanted her to get used to it being around and be comfortable with it. I explained to her what it was (though, how much she understood is impossible to tell...). I put her on it a few times last week to reinforce what the point is, but she wasn't showing much interest, so I stopped.

Well, tonight after we brushed her teeth, she started pointing to it. I ignored it at first because, well, the kid points at everything. Then she walked over to it and tried taking her pants off. I figured, "what the heck?", and took off her diaper and helped her sit down. About 5 seconds later, I hear a little tinkle, and her face lights up with the biggest grin! So, of course I clapped and gave her hugs and kisses and lots of praise. She was so proud of herself!! And I was so proud, too!

(disclaimer. Obviously, I know this doesn't mean she's potty trained, or anywhere near that. But, it was exciting!)

And, she's still doing the giant mouthed smile thing. And it's still adorable. :)

Goofy baby

(This is mostly for Jonathan, since he's not here for all of this, and we don't get to talk as much as we'd like.)

Cecily has been in such a weird phase lately! She went a week barely sleeping at night and not taking any longer than a 30 minute nap during the day. That was a pretty bad week.

Then randomly one night she went back to sleeping 12 hours at night. Hallelujah!! But ever since, she has had the goofiest personality! She makes really funny faces at people, she flirts mercilessly with every guy she sees (and actually started blushing when one cashier looked at her and said hi), and she has started showing off for people. She loves Gideon and Hayden! We were over at mom's yesterday and she was doing something silly in the hallway, but kept looking back to make sure Hayden was still watching.

She's also started making jokes. She'll babble something to everyone, then start cracking up and look confused when no one else is laughing. We were in the produce department recently, and she looks at the apples, gives me this really mischievous look, then points to the apples and says, "mommy!!" and started cracking up. And every time I tried to get her to call me "mommy" (which she normally does) she would laugh hysterically and call the apples "mommy". It was ridiculous, but she (along with some old guys that were standing near us) thought it was hilarious.

And today, I was trying to take a picture of us to text to Jonathan and every time I told her to smile, she would open her mouth as wide as it will go. So now I have like 6 pictures of Cecily "smiling".

At dinner the other day, she put her foot on the table (one of her favorite things to do), and I firmly told her to take it down. She gave me her mischevious look, then wriggled her body into this super awkward position in order to put BOTH feet on the table.

And this is her chillin' on the couch position. She loves doing this while we watch Wheel of Fortune every night. :)

Baby dolls!

Cecily has had zero interest in all the baby dolls she got for Christmas. Until today, that is. I watched my cousin for a couple of hours today, and she loved playing with Cecily's dolls, so of course, Cecily had to play with them, too. All evening she's been super attached to them! It's kind of adorable. :)