A baby in an hour or less, or the birth story of Asher Gene Jacobson

Well, in case you didn't know, I had a baby. It's quite the story. Buckle up and hang on tight, because I sure didn't and I was almost derailed, and I lived it!

I kind of had a faint inkling in my mind that this baby was going to come a bit early (I was 38 weeks if my original due date was right, which I'm starting to think that it was not) but I didn't want to get my hopes up in case this wasn't the case, so I tried to squash the inkling the best I could. The only concession I did make was to ask if my mother-in-law would be able to come out a little earlier than she planned, which she graciously agreed to do. All my other pregnancies had either been late (Evelynn) or induced a few days early, so I didn't really think I had much of a shot of going early. But babies are fickle creatures, wouldn't you know.

Because I need to finally remember this stuff next time...

I am about five blog posts behind in the stuff that has been happening in my families life outside my pregnancy, but since the last month of pregnancy is a little life consuming and distracting, this is what you're getting now. I figure I'll have some free time in the hospital where I can catch up (and Doug has a laptop now that I could use) so you'll all find out about my life the last two months, as well as some remaining summer stories, soonish.

The reason for this post is because I think that most women, myself included, forget just how hard the last month of pregnancy is. Not to say that we forget it's hard, nothing can erase this kind of discomfort and emotional upheaval, but sometimes the details get a little fuzzy. This is my fourth pregnancy and I'm still thinking to myself everyday, "Is this normal? Did this happen last time? Is this baby going to come today or in 2 weeks?" So, for my own sanity next time, I'm recording a few things so I can look back and say, oh yeah, this is "normal." And I figured it was also a legit way to vent.

Do not labor and drive

Some people might know that when I am pregnant, after about month 4-5 my uterus becomes very sensitive to changes in barometric pressure. This means I become a human barometer and I start cramping, contracting, and generally becoming very crabby before storms roll in. Once the storms actually get here, it's not usually a problem. Sometimes these pains come up to 24 hours before the storm does, and the greater the pains the bigger the storm. Well, yesterday I looked at the forecast and noticed that a drop in temperature was due to occur today (high of 70 to a high of 55 today) but there was no rain associated with this change, just some wind predicted. I figured if I did have any pains, they would be mild.

Michael turns 2!

Michael had a birthday (*cough cough*, a month ago, ahem)! He turned the big two, which really isn't all that big but hey, two is still a cool age. :) We've started the tradition of coloring signs for the kids and hanging them up the night before so that they see them in the morning. I have decided to name the rest of my kids names 4 letters or less in direct result of this (not really, but it is making me seriously reconsider my current favorite girl name of Charlotte for the new baby). Doug colored the bulk of the letters while I was at my presidency meeting. He even freehand drew the Lightening McQueen on the M, just because he is that awesome.

1st Grade and bedtimes

 Well, now that Doug and I have gone to our first parent/teacher conference of the school year, I guess I should tell you about Evelynn starting 1st grade. So Evelynn started 1st grade this year. And she was very happy about it. :) She has the first track of school, meaning she starts at 8:00 am and gets done at 2:15pm. It took us a few days to figure out exactly how much time we needed in the morning to get ready, which lead to the first day of school having an extra 30 minutes before we had to leave. But we've finally got the timing right to incorporate maximum sleeping time (for me, not for her. I've only had to wake her up for school 2 or 3 times) and still accomplish the morning to do list. Like I mentioned, Evelynn, and now Eloise by default of sharing the same room, have become early risers, much to my dismay. Instead of waking up at 7:30 like they have been for a long time, it is now 6:30. Which means that the normal 8:30 bedtime was just an hour too late, and meltdowns were becoming way to frequent. We're slowing moving bedtime up as the days get shorter. We're somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 now, and its improved the overall house mood quite a bit. I also brought up an old alarm clock for the girls, not intending it as an alarm but as a way to regulate when they left their rooms in the morning. Starting netflix unsupervised at 6:30am is not a good habit I'm thinking. We had a lesson in numbers (mostly for Eloise's sake) and emphasized what 7:00 am looked like, and what it meant if they didn't see that magic number 7 on the screen, and what they were allowed to do before the 7 appeared (stay in bed, read, stay quiet, go back to sleep) and what they were NOT allowed to do (come out of their room, scream at each other, scream at mom down the hall that they wanted breakfast, etc). It's been working out rather nicely, except for the first two nights. Somehow, magically, twice, the switch was turned on to activate the radio alarm to go off at midnight, at full volume. Two nights in a row. Hopefully someone has learned their lesson about messing with the buttons and getting alarming noises blasted in their room.

Introducing Isabella

No, Geneen hasn't had her baby, and no, we still don't know what we're having. This post probably should have come a month ago, but, life is busy.

In the beginning of August, after things had settle down from all our travels and family visits, and with the hutch finished, we decided to get a rabbit. Our original intent was to get a couple of female rabbits. We had hoped to get them from our friends who raised rabbits, but they didn't have any rabbit kits.

We looked around on KSL, we found an add by a young girl who was selling rabbits for $8.00. We called, made an appointment and went down to take a look. The rabbits were a holland lop mix and were pretty cute. The litter was about 8 weeks old. There was only one female rabbit so we decided that we'd start with one rabbit and add to that later if we wanted to. Since we were only getting one, gender wasn't as big a deal, however the girls picked the girl one.

After stopping by IFA for food and straw and hay, we brought our bunny home. The girls were pretty excited, after talking it over they decided to name her Isabella (inspired by Phineas and Ferb).

We've had a lot of fun with our new pet. We let her out in the yard to run around, and she does really well with the kids. She'll even let Michael walk right up to her and pet her. She also enjoys sitting on our laps and being petted.

She's pretty cute. All in all, I think our first experiment with a pet is a successful one.

Summer Project

Occasionally, I get the mad notion that I can do a project. This spring I thought it would be a good experience for our children if we could get a pet. Geneen wasn't too keen on the idea, but some friends of ours had recently started raising rabbits. After talking with them, Geneen came around to the idea that a rabbit might not be that bad a pet.

Of course a rabbit needs a place to live, after looking online for a rabbit hutch to buy, I decided that I could design and make my own hutch. Thus the summer project began.

Seattle Vacation 2012: Tanner Edition

We took our almost usually annual trip to WA this summer, but this summer was special because we were going mainly to visit some very special people that we hadn't been able to see for a long time, ever since they betrayed us and moved across the country all for the sake of "education," the jerks.... but that's another story. By some amazing act of a kind God, the Tanner's ended up moving from Kentucky to Maple Valley Washington, only five minutes from Doug's parents! So in the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, but really going to hang out with our friends since they now lived 13 hours away instead of 30, we made the drive up to WA for the 4th of July. We left at 4:00 am from Orem, which may seem insane to some of you, but it's actually really really nice to hit Boise at 9:00 am and Doug's parent's house around 4:30 pm with enough time to unwind, eat dinner, and finish the evening only marginally exhausted. And our kids did excellent on the whole trip. Evelynn is becoming more interested in time, and so the usual answer to the question "When are we going to get there?" (Not for a long time) had to be explained in hours, minutes, seconds, and constant reminder that hours took a long time. I even managed to do well on the trip, not having to make any more stops than the kids did to pee or stretch my legs, so go me. :) This lovely picture of my pretty pink toes was taken somewhere in Idaho. Doug was talking about/making fun of all those people who photograph their feet traveling, saying it was only a cool picture if there was a beach scene behind said feet. So I promptly took a picture of my feet, to capture the moment.

Once upon a time, it was summer.

Summer tiiiimmme, and the livin's eeeeeazyyyyy. (Porgy and Bess) Except that our summertime has bee packed! These pictures are just filling in the gaps of the time when we were less busy. A detailed explanations of our excursions, vacations, and family events will follow.

Las Vegas getaway

Summer, oh summer, how amazingly busy you have been! I still have most of August to go, and my schedule for that is already filling up really fast. School might not come soon enough. I need a break.

Anyway, let's start at the beginning. In May, Doug's parents came down for a visit, during which Doug and I ran away to Vegas for 3 days to have our yearly getaway. Why Vegas you ask? Most people (LDS people that is) find the culture crude and uncomfortable, which can be true depending on where you wander. But Doug and I have been several times now, and the city seems to have cleaned itself up over the past few years. There were hardly any people handing out flyers or other such things, you didn't see pictures all over the ground. The people who go there by and large are there for the drinking and gamboling, but there is a surprising amount of families with children there to see the sights and enjoy the cheap accommodations, which brings me to the main reason we went. Our hotel, which was off the strip and not a casino (no gamboling at all in it actually) was $89 a night, and included a kitchen and a hot breakfast. It was great.

School's out! Time for some bragging!

Evelynn graduated from kindergarten with flying colors. Of course, I knew she would because hey, it's kindergarten and she loved it which usually means your child did well in it, right? Her teacher gave us a copy of her scores for the kindergarten testing that they do. I have no idea what the numbers mean other than the fact that the numbers got better between August and May, but I'll post them anyway because I think they're awesome even in my ignorance. And lets face it, it's not like I'm going to remember where I put this paper in 20 years, but I may remember where I put my blog.

Everythings fine, it was just a little blood.

I have had three picture perfect pregnancies. Three times in a row where I got pregnant, grew a baby, baby came out 9 months later, everything was fine. Three times where I went in for one ultrasound at 18-20 weeks to check the gender and that was it.* But I guess if you get that lucky three times in a row, you're bound to be given a wild card. Not that this baby has been really all that bad, but for me, it's been a weird pregnancy. Yesterday Doug and I went to the Salt Lake temple for his cousin Jamie's endowment. Everything was fine (except it took a long time for me to get food, which sucked, but I survived) and on the car ride home I was completely engrossed in a phone call from my sister where she told me she was getting engaged (HOORAY LIZZY!). So I didn't notice that I had started to bleed again. But when I stood up to get out of the car, it sort of became very apparent. I took it rather calmly. I walked up stairs, got cleaned up, then called Doug in to break the news. Then I kissed the girls goodnight and walked back down stairs to call my mom, who was asleep, and then my mother-in-law, who told me to call the on call doctor, which I should have done in the first place (duh. So maybe I wasn't taking it as well as I thought). Anyway, I called him and he said that as long as it wasn't a heavy flow and I didn't have severe cramps I could wait until the morning and call my doctor for an ultrasound. Doug then gave me a blessing, and we went to bed. Things had calmed down in the bleeding area by morning, it was mostly that one gush and that was it. The cramping had me worried though because I thought I was having some mild cramps when I went to bed, so I stayed awake much longer than I wanted waiting to see if they got worse. Turns out it was just gas, which was to be expected because every time I eat out I get gas because I don't have a gall bladder. TMI? Eh. Anyway, the morning came and I got in to see the ultrasound tech right away, and she checked out everything lickety split. Seriously, it was the fastest ultrasound I'd ever seen. But I guess if she was squeezing me in, she had a right to go quickly. Also, there was nothing wrong with me or the baby, so no reason to linger. She told me my placenta had probably bleed as a result of it attaching to the uterus wall, or it got irritated because it was located close to the cervix at the moment, or I just happened to bleed randomly last night but everything was fine now as long as the bleeding was stopping, which it was. Then she got some pictures of the baby for me. It was so sweet to see the little trouble maker. I saw the heart beat and the baby thrashing around in there (Doug says he saw a fist pump move going on) and I got a sweet little picture. It was so nice to see tangible evidence that I was actually pregnant with a human child and not getting over an elongated flu with associated weight gain (don't judge my paranoia). This makes it a grand total of four ultrasounds in 13.5 weeks of pregnancy. And I have another one with my neighbor the ultrasound technician next week, mostly because she really wanted to and I said hey, why not, and then the one where we check for the gender. So that will make six total that I know about, but who knows? We could go for more. The nurse also told me to take it easy this weekend, which translated for me as "You are hereby ordered to take more naps and do less chores." Good thing Doug is off tomorrow and my in-laws get here on Sunday. :) Anywho, here's the picture from ultrasound #4.




*Michael also had a brief ultrasound at 8 weeks to check for the heartbeat, but I guess that's standard now where it wasn't with the girls.

The Jacobson Kids and the Messy Room

Ever read the book The Berenstein Bears and the Messy Room? That book kind of described my life for the past good while. I sympathized with Momma Bear so much. I just wanted to take a box and start throwing toys into it for the trash man, and threatened to do so on more than one occasion. The girls would fight over who was cleaning, who wasn't, who was supposed to be picking up what, and how it was "Tooooooo big a mmmeeesssss!" every night. So yesterday, because the room was messy and because we had not had a chance to clean it up the night before due to being out late for FHE, I told the girls at 10:15 am that they needed to clean their room. At 10:45 I said as soon as they were done they could have lunch. At 11:00 I said if they could get done quickly they could have chocolate milk with their lunch. At 11:15, I called Doug and told him my plan. 4 toys, 4 stuffed animals, 4 dress ups, 4 books, and that was it! Everything else was going into storage until further notice. I just couldn't handle the screaming, both on their part and on mine. I couldn't handle the stress, the contention that lasted well into the night that made bedtime miserable! The girls were missing story time more and more often, which is something that I really enjoy with my kids, and it was getting cancelled too often because bedroom cleanup took 30-45 minutes, and only with parental supervision (please read as breaking up fights, over coming tantrums, or wading through both to make the work get done). No bueno. So I hatched a plan to limit the mess, thereby limiting the whining and clean up. I mean a room can only get so messy with a few toys in it right? And it wasn't like the mess being made was from toys being played with. Usually things got dumped out to find other things, or collections of odds and ends would end up all over the house, only to be dragged back upstairs by me to not the put away by my kids. Anyway, back to "the plan." I presented it to Doug....well, I told him what I was going to do and it would be great if he would get on board but it was happening anyway. I might have told him "the plan" in the heat of the moment, aka right after failed room cleaning #110000001. Anyway, the point is that he agreed with me, but wanted to take the sting out of the situation for the girls. I wanted to accomplish the plan in stealth, where it was done while Evelynn was a school and then break the news to the girls. Looking back that was probably a little vindictive of me, so it was lucky that it didn't go down that way. Doug suggested a family meeting. I thought this would lead to more tears and screaming, but he insisted, so I went along. He bought the book The Messy Room and started our meeting reading that to the girls. Then he had them talk about cleaning their room, what was hard about it, what they didn't like about it, etc. Then he had him and I talk about how it makes US feel when the girls don't clean their room. They took it rather well. Then he presented "the plan." We were going to clean out and throw away a lot of the stuff that had accumulated in the room over time, and get rid of toys we don't use etc. After this process, the girls would be allowed to choose a few of each category of toys, then the rest would be put in a box and put in the basement for a while, where we could trade toys every few months. They took this news much much better than I expected. In the end, we kept all the books except the ones which were broken/missing pages, three toys/stuffed animals for their beds to sleep with, three dress ups each, and two toy sets each (like their magnetic dress up dolls) and then one set of toys they chose together (they chose dishes and food for their kitchen). I couldn't believe how much stuff we threw out though! I mean, we've only lived in this house for a year, but there were so many little junk toys to get rid of, like 2/3 of a puzzle, broken dolls, McDonald's toys etc and also lots, and lots, and lots of paper! This I blame on my crafty daughter Evelynn, but we also discovered with the paper like 20 crayons, so that was nice. The room is much more bare, but I think, hope, pray, that this is a good change. We told the girls they were not allowed to complain of a "big mess" anymore since we ensured that this could not be possible. Even with all the toys and dress ups on the floor, it would all fit in two milk crates (which is what we use to store toys in the closet). Bottom line of the story is that I am grateful for my husband who recognized the strain this problem was placing on me, and so didn't shoot down my master plan as too harsh, but instead tempered it to make it more palatable to the kids. It's so nice to have someone work side by side with you in raising kids. Today the kids played all morning with their toys. I think it helped a lot to have the toys all put back together so they could find all the pieces. I'll update later how the experiment is going, but for now, here's to simplifying our lives!

Remember that one time?

Remember that one time I ran a half marathon and it was awful because of the heat and the wind the thirst and the wind and the fact that I felt so fatigued and the wind etc etc? Yeah, me too. Remember how I mentioned that I started my period the day after the race and chalked up the fatigue and other symptoms to that? Yeah, me too. Remember how I then proceeded to bleed (only lightly, but bleed none the less) for 20 straight days? Yeah.... I might not have mentioned that. Well I got an ultrasound, thinking that I either had a tumor or some other disease/malady, and found out it was just a parasite. One that lasts about 40 weeks. And it was already 5 1/2 weeks along. Go figure. :) The ultrasound guy was actually pretty funny. I had to drink 36 oz of water 1 hour before getting the ultrasound done, so when he started with the procedure he's like "I bet you have to pee, so I'm sorry. Oh, and did you know you were pregnant?" I was like, "No.... am I?" So I decided to buy this shirt for Michael and send out a picture to my family after I had another ultra sound a while later to confirm the heart beat. It was confirmed, and my nausea set it, confirming it further, and then my body said "Oh, this is your fourth parasite! Let's just relax." Please interpret this as me not being able to fit into my pants at 6 weeks and 3 days along. Seriously. One day I could, the next day I could not. So not fair. Anyway, we are super excited, and a little surprised (because although it was a "planned" pregnancy, it almost jumped the gun on us. The plan wasn't supposed to go into effect until AFTER my race, but apparently this baby couldn't wait another 4 weeks) to announce the future arrival of Jacobson baby #4 around November 26th!

I know you think I'm perfect....

 ....but I'm not. I'm pretty spectacular, don't get me wrong, but I'm far from perfect. I read on someone's blog (sorry random person who I can't remember) that it was a pity sometimes to portray yourself as totally in control, a neat freak, uniquely crafty all the time, and an all around perfect mom, because it can makes others feel inadequate, and lets face it, we all go to other people's blogs (because it's almost like visiting with them in real life, right?) and see only the cute stuff and think that is all there is to a person. Well, I'm here to burst your bubble. My life this week has been kind of awful. I have a terrible head cold, cough, sore throat combo which is making it really hard for me to get a good night's sleep/any sleep at all, plus all three of my kids have bad coughs which wake them up in the night and cause general grouchiness around the home. I was looking at my house today after I barely managed to get dinner on the table and into my kids bellies sans Doug (he's at an elder's quorum service activity, so he's excused) and I just though, this looks terrible. I'm going to take a picture. Here it is folks. My life. I hope I didn't make anyone faint or rethink their friendship with me. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. :)

 Kitchen which includes some of yesterday's dinner dishes, and all of today's dishes. The white stuff on the floor is Michael's hamburger bun he took before dinner and then ate/crumbled as he walked around the whole house.

 The counter, which is the general collector of stuff  throughout the day. Please notice today's mail, Evelynn's homework, breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes/stuff, and trash. Then there is the kitchen table, which at that moment only contained dinner stuff because all the breakfast and lunch stuff had been relocated elsewhere.

And finally the living room. This one isn't too bad, but notice the kids watching a movie after dinner. It was either that or take them to the park, but when Michael decided to go to sleep at 6:00 pm, that decision was made for them. Not like they minded though, I mean really.

Easter madness

Candy candy candy candy candy.... and I had to buy barely any of it! :)This year we had two Easter egg hunts that we attended, and Evelynn had an Easter party at school. By the time we bought our candy on Saturday, I told Doug to only buy a little bit, which he did not, but that was so he could have most of it later. In his words "It's not going to be here tomorrow, might as well buy what I want today so I have it for later." This translated to a big Winco size bag of gummy bunnies. He also said he only stopped when he got to the point where he thought, "Any more and Geneen will be upset." :) Love you sweetie, enjoy your gummies for the next six months. Anyway, back to the matter of candy for the kids. Our neighbors put on a neighborhood Easter egg hunt for the families every year. This year they did it on the Saturday of conference, before the first session. They do eggs with candy, some with money in them, and a few special golden eggs that are redeemed for bigger prizes in the house. Michael really didn't care about the eggs, mostly because he didn't know what was inside them. Evelynn and Eloise were egg collecting experts though. They got their allotted amount in no time flat. Eloise even got one of the eggs with a dollar in it. Evelynn was very jealous, but the tooth fairy made up for that deficit quite nicely (see previous post). They then proceeded to eat all of their candy during the first and second session of conference, and I was just fine with that. Kept them quiet-ish, and when the sugar rush got too high I sent them in the back yard to burn it off. Through this method I watched almost 1/2 of each session. Not too shabby.

 All the neighborhood kids and grand kids of our neighbors who participated.

On this past Saturday, we attended BYU's 1st annual Easter egg hunt at Lavell Edwards Stadium. They sent out an email advertizing it and asked people to tell them how many people would be coming through an online survey so they would know how much candy to get. I put down five people, but then later realized that only three people would actually be participating in the event, but it turns out it didn't matter. What they did was divide the football field into a two-thirds sections and a one-third section for the age groups (4-8 and 0-3) and then set out about 5000 eggs that had prizes in them. Some you redeemed for candy bars, shirts, football tickets, and tours of the locker rooms. Then they took bag and bags and bags and bags and bags of candy and opened them and flung them all over the field, along with some other random BYU paraphernalia. 

 The field.

 Pre-hunt waiting. They took forever to get started. It was advertized to start at 12:00, but we didn't walk down to the field until 12:30.

 Walking out onto the field, view to the 4-8 age group side.

 The chaos, when most of the candy was gone. It only took about 5-7 minutes for the candy to be gone.

Side note about something that bugs me, and if you are a parent that does this, sorry to offend you. It bother's me that the young age group even included 0 year olds. Seriously guys, if you want candy, go buy some. Don't go out their with your 6 month old and collect candy "for them." Everyone knows you're going to eat it, not your baby. Save the candy for the kids, buy your own. That being said, I did not pick up any candy for Michael. I figured that he knew what it was, and he most certainly did, and so he could pick it up or leave it as he would. Turns out once he realized that there was more candy out there than just by his feet, he was more than willing to get his hands on as much of it as he could. And he got plenty. All the kids did. In fact, we got so much that the Easter bunny took what had not been eaten on the way home (Evelynn ate almost all of hers on the car ride home before I could stop her) and redistributed it more fairly among the Easter baskets.

That afternoon we colored eggs. Only had one dye spill, and I think they turned out pretty cool this year. 

 Doug's smiley face egg.

 My starry night egg.

 Doug's happy egg.

Evelynn's stripes egg.

Easter day when the girls got up we told them the Easter bunny hid their baskets this year. They were so confused. They wandered from room to room "looking" for their baskets (read as walk in, turn around in the circle, walk out and run to us and whine that they couldn't find it). Finally Doug and I had to drop some hints. We didn't think we had made it that hard, but apparently behind the bulging couch cushions and in the washing machine with the glass front door was too difficult. This could explain so much about why my kids can't find anything when I ask them, even when it's right in front of them, sometimes literally. We had Stake Conference for church, so we battled, I mean endured, I mean went to church for two hours and then came home. The girls did really well, but Michael did not. He spent most of his time wandering the halls, playing with the drinking fountains, and screaming. We then came home and made the traditional Easter feast (aka ham, potatoes, rolls, asparagus, salad, deviled eggs from the 7 eggs we actually got to peel properly, and dessert. Never gets old, but that's probably because we only have it once a year). I didn't get any pictures of Easter day, but hey, that's ok. All you need to know is that we came, we ate, and that was enough.

Toothy fairy get's caught unawares

 Evelynn came running out of school yesterday telling me all about this apple she had been eating and how it made her tooth wiggly and how it was going to come out now etc etc. I was driving her home, so I didn't really confirm the fact right then, and I was also thinking, a loose tooth? No way. She's way to young for that! Well, upon stopping the car I checked said tooth, low and behold, it was honestly wiggly! But it was just at the beginning stages, and if she was anything like me, it would be a few days of wiggling before it got loose enough to pull out, or it would just fall out on it's own. I thought loose teeth were gross as a kids (cool, but gross, and I NEVER fell for the "Let's pull your tooth out!" tricks. Yuck yuck yuck.) Apparently as an adult, they are still gross, maybe even grosser. But Evelynn apparently is not like I was as a child. She is like my brother Jesse, who when he had even an INKLING of a loose tooth, real or imagined, he would stand at the bathroom mirror until it was out. I remember one night he pulled out three teeth, only one of which has been loose that morning. Evelynn worked on that tooth all evening, to the point of her not responding to questions, or answering a question with a remark about the progress of her tooth. Example:

Evelynn, did you clean your room?
I think my tooth is almost out! I'm going to look in the mirror.

Evelynn, will you be reverent for prayers?
Dad, will you pull my tooth out now?
Evelynn, it's time for prayers.
Oh, well after prayers?

By the time she was in bed, I was sure the tooth could last until tomorrow so the tooth fairy would have time to get some funds from the store, since I (ahem) she never has change laying around when she needs it. Well, about 20 minutes after Evelynn had been put to bed, she came down stairs with a bloody mouth and her once merely wiggly tooth turned sideways and asking daddy to please pull it out now. I had to cover my eyes, but he did pull it out. It clearly was not really ready, but you can't go to school, or back to bed for that matter, with a sideways tooth, so it had to come out. She was so happy, and slightly bloody, but mostly happy. So back to bed she went to proudly put her tooth under her pillow, and the tooth fairy found some change and borrowed some more and made a deposit that night. I guess she's truly a kid now. Some how losing a tooth aged my little girl over night. I'm a little sad about her losing her baby teeth, kind of like her loosing her last link to babyhood, one tooth at a time. ~sigh~

Michael is also growing by leaps and bounds, especially in the leaps and bounds department. He's mastering the trampoline, even if his sisters are on the trampoline with him. Saturday he decided his jammies were too foot confining, so he removed that part of them and then went outside, superman style. We got some funny shots of him jumping. He has also mastered the word NO. Before, he would only say "Uh uh," which was cute but a little vague. Well, now he says no, when he means no, when he means yes, when he's mad, happy, sad, or scared. In the video he does say no, but that's not why I took it. I took it because he put a tatoo on his tummy, and it was funny watching it suprise him by being there everytime he lifted up his shirt. Enjoy. :)

The 1/2 Marathon, or the *@%$#~!! blustery day.

 Last October we had Stake Conference in our "new" ward (we've almost been here a year {whoa!} but it still seems new) and one of the counselors got up and spoke at the Saturday session, mentioning that he has just completed a marathon that morning and to please forgive him if he fell asleep mid-talk because marathon's tend to make him sleepy and he forgot he had one scheduled on the same day as stake conference. Everyone chuckled. Later the stake president got up to talk and said he was surprised that someone could forget that they would be having a near death experience but he was grateful that his counselor could be here as planned. I thought, ha, that's funny because marathons are hard! Ha ha.... ha. A little over a month later I signed up for my first half marathon. I figured, hey, I can run 6-7 miles without too much trouble, I'm sure I can double my mileage in four months and run 13.1 miles. It won't take as long as training for a marathon, not to mention the fact that I don't want to run a marathon* , and it'll be a good way to train through the winter even though I was short on training companions and motivation. I signed up for the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab with my aunt Janet, and even though she had to back out later, I still remained committed. I ran 11.3 miles about four weeks before the event, and proceeded to hurt my knee. I thought I needed to get new shoes, but I postponed because I didn't have the money for new shoes (a cool $100 for the kind I want/only kind I will buy now makes it hard to justify buying new ones often). I tapered off my training and got my knee looked at by my chiropractor/massage therapist, and got on the road to recovery without buying new shoes. But because of this I never did get around to running 13.1 miles before racing 13.1 miles. I didn't think this would be a problem because hey, most first-timers don't train for the whole race and still do fine. Please note, this was mistake #1.

I didn't look for a hotel for the race until the beginning of January, thinking I will so get a jump on things by booking a hotel two months before the race. Oops, no hotels available. Luckily Janet saved my bacon by thinking ahead and getting a room before she even registered for the race. We'll call this mistake #1.5, because it was corrected. She let me have the room even when she had to drop out, sweetie that she is.

The day before the race came, and I started to look at what I should be eating before the race. Mistake #2.5. I hadn't been eating enough carbs, and I hadn't practiced running with the goo or other supplements you can eat during the race to maintain your energy. I got super nervous. I tried to think of what I could do to correct the mistake, but all the websites and training advice said to not eat anything different that what you have been doing because you can screw up your digestive system and have some digestive problems during the race. So I did nothing. This was mistake #3. I should have eaten a lot more food than I did the day before and the day of the race. But because I was so nervous, I didn't. I could tell I needed to have more reserves during the race. It would have helped me a lot. I also was not practiced in eating/drinking goo. I tried twice to consume some goo during the race and only got half a packet down before my throat (and tongue, those things are gross) revolted. I need to find a better flavor, if it exists, and force myself to eat them at more regular intervals. I tried at mile 6 and mile 10. Yuck yuck yuck. But I desperately needed the fuel, so I risked taking them. I'm glad I didn't have need of a bathroom mid race. A lot of people did, and I saw at least one girl who could not wait until the next port-a-potty and peeled off the side of the road to do her business in the bushes. Gross.

Me boarding the bus, 2.5 hours before the race started. We had to wait at the starting line until 10 am so they could close the highway for us to run on. 

All these rookie mistakes aside, the race still would have gone better than it had if there had not been a few unforeseen circumstances. First, and well, the biggest reason really, was the weather.  It was warm. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you have been training for four months in temperatures that were always lower that 40 degrees, running in 70 degrees in the sun is HOT. My body was just not well adapted to it, and I was so thirsty. Even stopping at every water station and drinking two cups of water, or one cup of water and one cup of Gatorade was not enough to keep me hydrated. It took a big toll on me. If I had been running in 45 degree weather, I would have coped a lot better. Second weather problem was the wind. It was windy that day. Not just breezy, some light wind, or even some wind that makes you think, oh, that was a bit hard to run through, thank goodness it's over. It was an almost constant, hard wind for the whole race, peaking in strength at mile 10-12.5 The wind was between 30-35 mph, with gusts over 55 mph. Every runner was affected. Coming out of the canyon and into Moab proper was beastly. You went from strong intermittent wind that sometimes felt like it was forcing too much air into your lungs so you felt like you had to either swallow air or stop breathing to be comfortable, to wind that made you have to bend double to keep dirt out of your eyes and mouth and stay upright. I felt like I had weights not only on my legs, but on my arms because it was blowing so hard it was difficult to swing my arms back and forth. It felt like I was running continually uphill in water. Today, the muscles that are the most sore are my quads, shoulders, and neck from hunching while running. It was mentally and physically exhausting to run in that wind. I just felt like I literally could not finish the race. People were stopping to walk all around me, and eventually I had to stop and walk too, several times. Finally a very tall old man passed me, and in my desperation I used him to block the wind for me so I could have some respite. It worked, very well apparently because when I left this man at the next water station, several shorter people directly behind me fell out of line.

I will not kid you, when I had to stop and walk I felt like a failure. I had never had to stop and walk in a race before. I had been sorely tempted many times, but I had always been able to preserver and finish the race strong. This time was different because I was in doubt as to whether I would be able to finish the race at all. Mentally I was spent. I was so discouraged. My body hurt, my mile 11 time was 11:34, and I was 9 minutes behind my pace. I decided at the last water station as mile 12 that I would run the whole last mile. I made it, barely. I swear they kept moving the yellow finishing banner the whole time, and I thought my watch had broken because even though the time kept ticking on by, my mileage seemed to stop. But I did cross the finish line. First time ever that I did not sprint, I had nothing left. As a result, about 20 people passed me right at the end. I didn't care. I found Doug waving and smiling and saying "Good job!" after the finish line, and I just started to cry. As I leaned on him for so much needed support to stay standing, I said "That was horrible! I'm never doing this again!" He was concerned, and asked me if I needed anything. Right then I saw another racer walk by with chocolate milk. "I need chocolate milk, and I need to sit down. Now." So I went and got milk and an orange. In the snack line they had bananas, oranges, bread, cheese sticks, cookies, chips, and chocolate. My body felt like it wanted to puke at the sight of food at the time, but even now I have to wonder, who the heck wants to eat chocolate and chips right after a race! Gross! Personally I didn't want to eat anything for about three hours after the race. I shocked my body too badly. After I got food I tried to sit down, I really did, but my legs wouldn't stop moving. Finally Doug asked me if I was going to sit or what, then made me sit down when I told him my predicament. It hurt to sit, oh how it hurt. And then later I had to get up. That was bad.

 Me and my much needed chocolate milk.

Anyway, this seems like a really long blog post about me complaining about my self-inflicted pain. And it is, but I'm doing it for a very good reason. Immediately after the race, I swore to Doug that I would never run more than 6 miles ever again. About four hours after the race, I  was thinking about what I could have done to make the race go smoother. The next day I was thinking about how long I should recover before I started running again. And today I thought about how I could do better in my next race.....And I've officially decided that racing is like having babies. You go through all that pain, anguish and discomfort and think "Whoa! I don't want to do this again soon/ever again!" And then time passes and you think about doing it again, and then you do it again, and then you remember why you didn't want to do it again in the first place. Racing is like that, at least for me. I went through @#!*% . I cussed like a sailor (at least in my head), prayed over and over again to God to help me get through this, almost gave up, cried, and hated almost every minute of the race after the 8th mile, and yet I'm still considering doing it again! Runners are crazy, and I am one of the craziest.

 Trying to sit down. 

Almost there!

 

Oh it hurts. So bad.

For the record, my time according to my watch, which I started as I crossed the starting line and stopped at the finishing line, and I didn't cheat like I wanted to and stopped the watch at every water station I walked through, was 2:06:52. My goal was to finish the race in under two hours, which I obviously didn't do. But I didn't feel too terrible about my time after I heard that the top racers and even the pace racers (people who run with a flag on their back marking the time they are predicted to finish the race, and are usually spot on) were five minutes off their times. So if I had not had the wind to deal with, I would have gotten a lot closer to my goal time. If I had not gotten three side aches and started my period yesterday (Oh, that makes a difference? Yes, yes it does. A big one.) I might have even met my goal time. Oh well, maybe next time.....

 This is me about 15 minutes after finishing. I kept telling Doug I didn't want my picture taken, but he said I would want them later. I can't decide if he was right yet.

There were some good parts about the experience that were not associated with the actual running part of the trip. First was that I got to spend a night away from the kids with my husband, which is always awesome because he is so awesome. We got to explore Moab a bit, which was fun. I also had lots of fun in the hours before the race started meeting and talking with the racers. I met a very nice gay couple from New Mexico who were running the race for the third time together. They offered to get coffee with me, but I had to decline. :) I met a girl from Murray UT who had 4 kids and was running the race 1 year after getting in a bike accident and breaking all the bones in her ankle/leg and getting plates and screws put in. I met a girl from Boston who has a goal of running a 1/2 or full marathon in every state in her life. I told her about the Route 66 race my dad runs in October that spans Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri so she could knock out three states in one go. She seemed very interested. I also met two Canadians from Ontario who were my wind blocks at the race start while we waited for the gun to go off. They talked about free surgery in Canada, mooses and how to avoid them, and hockey. I liked them. :) So it wasn't a totally loss, just those 2 pesky hours towards the end of it all.

*Doug doesn't believe me, but I swear it's true. I DO NOT want to run a marathon. Opinion subject to change at a later date, but not at a soon later date, at a much much farther away later date.

An hour in the life of Michael

Michael has started the adventure of climbing. It's been a little bit stressful. We've had to retire the bar stools because Michael can climb on them up onto the counter, or he can push them around the kitchen and them play with the light switches, stove, oven, etc. He can also do that with the kitchen chairs, and things may become desperate soon. Yesterday he discovered this little chair outside and brought it inside for his explorations. I was mostly ok with this because it limited his reach and it's easier to deal with when left around the house verses bigger chairs being left. These pictures were taken in about an hour, while I was getting dinner ready. More things happened, but since I was busy with dinner I couldn't get pictures of all of them.