Quitter

That's right ladies and gentlemen....I quit my job! It was just too much to handle right now. So far everyone I've told that to has responded with, "I'm so proud of you!" Apparently I've been trying too hard recently....people will be impressed if I just give up :)

I'm currently in the process of submitting a 100 source bibliography for one of my graduate classes and 2 weeks ago I only had about 20 of them done. I still have three more days (yikes!) but thankfully I'm hovering around 80. Still a lot to do, but given the time frame I've had to do it, I'm rather impressed. Especially since I've been juggling a baby and 16 other credits in the meantime. Speaking of that baby....

Skylar had his 6-month checkup last week, so we get to update his height and weight!

6 Month Stats:

Weight: 16 lbs 10 oz (25th percentile)

Height: 25.5 inches (10th percentile)

Head: 45 cm (75th percentile)

His head is finally rounding out and following a growth curve! It is a relief to not be concerned about that anymore. We're just happy and healthy and working hard. 4 more weeks until graduation!!!

Pardon the Absence.....

So I realize that it has been awhile since I've posted, and I can see in my stats that people keep coming and checking to see if I've written anything.....so here is a quick update to at least explain my recent absence.

I am currently enrolled in my LAST semester of my undergrad. After five years, I am completely ready for April 21 to get here so I can finally have my 161 credit hours count for something :) I think it is absolutely disgusting that I have that many credits and nothing to show for it, but thankfully we're in the home stretch. I also find it funny that most people have a graduate degree AND undergrad by the time they accumulate 161 credits and I'm still holding out for my bachelor's. *sigh*

Unfortunately, since we had such a scary September I wasn't able to take any classes last semester. This means that basically I'm packing two semesters into one. So now I'm taking 18 credits, 4 of which are graduate credits. Yes, I'm pretty much insane, but I just want to be able to spend time with this man and little man!

Go Cougars!

I also recently took a job doing early morning custodial on campus. On top of everything else, our car ended up dying on us in the beginning of December so we had to buy a new (used) car. This meant that we had to plan a car payment into our budget, which we have never had to do. I hadn't realized how much I had taken for granted that we owned our last car. Add to that our large pile of medical bills, and the necessity of a second income came into play. We didn't want to go into debt, and we were very blessed that I was able to find this job. Ryan is able to watch Skylar while I work, watch being a very loose term since they sleep the whole time, since I work from 4:30-8 in the morning. Not my favorite, but I'm grateful that we were able to work things out.

Just to give you a taste of our days, this is my weekly schedule.

Monday: Work from 4:30-8. Class from 9-1.
Tuesday: Work from 4:30-8. Class from 9-11, 12-1, 4-5, and 6-7 (I HATE Tuesdays).
Wednesday: Work from 4:30-8. Class from 9-12.
Thursday: Work from 4-30-8. Class from 9-11, 12-1, and 4-5
Friday: Work from 4:30-8. Class from 9-12

Crazy, no? My theory is you can do anything for 3 1/2 months. I figure I can get a C in a class and it won't kill me, but I'm hoping not to have to test that theory out :) Ryan is also working full time and taking 12 credits, so we barely see each other. So for those of you that have complained that we have fallen off the face of the earth and you never hear from us, take some solace in knowing that we hardly see each other either!

Needless to say, you probably won't see many more posts from me for another 2 months or so. I'm sure most people that read this just want to hear about Skylar, so here are his four month stats (even though they are almost a month old at this point):

Height: 24 inches (20th percentile)

Weight: 13 lbs 15 oz (25th percentile)

Head circumference: 43.2 cm (75th percentile)

Yep, his height and weight are catching up to others his age, and his head is leaps and bounds above the rest! What is funny is that for his gestational age he is in the 115th percentile for head. Silly child. Hopefully it means he has a nice large brain :)

Our own baby Einstein :)

Well I have a sleeping child and as lame as it sounds, it is time for me to go to bed.....yes it is only 7:30, but I wake up at 3:30. You can do anything for 3 1/2 months right?! Humor me and nod your head yes. Oh well, here's to graduating! Hopefully next post you see has me in a cap and gown :)

Two-Month Checkup

Disclaimer: This post is a couple weeks old. I wrote it a couple weeks back, but didn't want to publish it without pictures. So I had to wait until my laptop was fixed to publish it :)

My baby boy is two months old! I can't believe how fast that went by. I feel like they barely let him come home yesterday. We had his two-month checkup the other day and we got to see where he lies on the growth chart. So without further ado:

Skylar's Two-Month Stats:

Height: 20 inches (5th percentile)

Weight: 9 lbs 1/2 oz (5th percentile)

Head: 40 cm (50th percentile)

No that is NOT a typo. This kid has a stinkin' monstrous head! Apparently we have a baby Einstein on our hands here :) After seeing that his head is so disproportionate, I've decided to cut him some slack on the fact that his neck is still floppy. That thing is huge! "Its like a toothpick attached to an orange!" (Say that with an Scottish accent, and points if you can tell me what movie it is from).

I feel like to truly appreciate how Skylar has changed over the past few months you need to compare his birth statistics.

Skylar's Birth Stats:

Height: 18 3/4 in (75th percentile)

Weight: 4 lbs 11 oz (50th percentile)

Head: 30.5 cm (50th percentile)

In the past two months, my baby has grown a little more than an inch and almost doubled his weight. Atta-boy kid :) I'm pretty sure that those percentiles were based on his gestational age rather than his calendar age, unlike his two-month percentiles. If you account for the fact that he was 5 weeks premature he is right on schedule and about 50th percentile for everything, but since he is being ranked against kids that had an extra 5 week head start on him it is no wonder he seems so small.

It is funny, everybody keeps remarking on how small and tiny he is, but to me he is HUGE! Seriously, compared to the baby they handed me in the NICU, this thing is a chunk. And boy do I love him :) I do realize that he is small for his calendar age, and I think that is what most people remark about. It is even hard for me because I never know when to treat him like a one-month-old, and when to treat him like a two-month-old. In a lot of ways he is right on track for his calendar age, and in other ways he is blissfully behind. We're not concerned about this though because the pediatrician and neonatologists all said that by about a year he will be caught up and on track with other kids his age.

Proof that he is in fact gaining weight!

Skylar's new favorite trick is grabbing. Grabbing shirts, grabbing fingers, and most of all grabbing hair. I'm definitely glad that I cut 14 inches off my hair last March (even though I still kind of miss it a little bit). He hasn't quite settled into a sleep pattern yet, but he has gotten the message that there are certain times of the day when Mama isn't quite as pleased to see him as others (re: 2:30 in the morning, especially if it is followed by 3:30, 4:30, 5:30, etc.). He even had one night where he slept five hours uninterrupted! Even though he hasn't repeated that glorious performance, he has settled in for a solid 3-4 hours of sleep at a time during the night. This has helped sooo much since now I only have to get up with him 2-3 times a night rather than 5-6.

He is working on the Anderson cheeks :)

In other news, we're heading out to New York for Thanksgiving since Ryan's mom was diagnosed with Stage IV lymphoma. Normally, I'm a big fan of travel, but I'm super nervous to try it with a baby. I think if we were headed to my family's house I would be a little less nervous since I already know where to find things, and I'm not shy about asking for help or asking for favors. However, I have no idea how I'm going to keep Skylar on a normal schedule and keep him healthy. His doctor is still somewhat concerned about his weight since we're headed into flu season, so she doesn't want him being passed around a lot. Is there a polite way to keep a baby protected around family? I'm not sure how to say, "No, he needs his sleep." or "No, he has had a little bit much today and just needs to be left alone for awhile." Is that rude?

I'm sure we'll figure it out, but if anybody has suggestions for keeping a baby happy and content while flying and being away from home I would appreciate the advice!

Epic Fail

So I'm a music major right? In utero my baby was introduced to the musical greatness of Mozart, Rochmaninoff, Haydn, Bach, and even more obscure composers like Diagilev and Palestrina.

Well thanks to a friend's play list on a blog we have found out that Skylar has a musical preference.

His choice?

Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.....

Epic Fail.

Things I've Made Recently

So I'll give you a break from all the baby drama :) One of the advantages to having Skylar home though is that we have been better about getting all the pictures off of our camera. I've been planning this post since last August, but was too lazy to transfer the pictures to our computer...Lame? Yes. But since I did wait so long, I now have more creations to add!

One of the things I started getting interested in last summer was cake decorating. My Aunt Laurie makes AWESOME cakes and I wanted to learn a few tricks. I started off with my own birthday cake that she helped me put together. It isn't the best, and cracked on the way drive back from Layton, but everybody has to start somewhere right?



It was super yummy though and was a raspberry cake with chocolate filling. I also made the same cake (by special request) for my sister Brittny's birthday in November, but I don't think I did anything special with it and can't find any pictures of it :)

The next birthday was Ryan's in January. He wanted a boring vanilla cake, but I convinced him to let me put a whipped cream filling with strawberries in the middle. This one also received rave reviews, and I was more pleased with the quality of the decorating on this one.

In honor of his love of all things BYU, we went with just a simple "Y". Not necessarily explicitly birthday, but still fun!

I branched out a little bit next and made an ice cream cake for Valentine's Day. It was layers of chocolate and vanilla ice cream with a cookie crumble filling in the middle. I didn't have a recipe for this one and just kinda made it up as I went. It turned out marvelously though, but I wouldn't ask for the recipe...I just can't remember what I did :) In my defense, I was still in the throes of the first trimester of pregnancy at the time and didn't think to write it down!

Not the most creative decoration, but like I said...I was in the middle of morning sickness!

The next cake I made was in celebration of our ultrasound. Since we didn't do anything fun to announce that we were having a baby, I wanted to do something fun for announcing our "flavor of baby." So I made a cake and decorated it and then sent pictures to my family and friends to make the announcement.
This one was a layer of vanilla cake and a layer of strawberry cake with a chocolate filling and chocolate frosting. For some reason my entire second trimester was all about chocolate and strawberry. Not separate, but together. Basically Neapolitan ice cream and I were best friends :)

This one is out of order, and not really in keeping with the genre, but I've also made lots of cheesecake for weddings, showers, birthdays, etc. It is basically the most perfect recipe so I haven't thrown any variety into it at all. It is a chocolate raspberry layered cheesecake and is my absolute favorite thing ever. I did try it with semi-sweet chocolate like the recipe calls for, but I quickly decided that I was correct in using milk chocolate instead. It even looks pretty when it is done!
This one I made to celebrate the birth of my nephew Sam! Half of our family was in Utah celebrating, so I made this for those of us stuck in California to celebrate with :)

My other recent creation has been a slew of baby blankets. I came up with this pattern when I had mono while Ryan and I were engaged. I was down and out for the count for a long time so while I was just lying in bed I decided to make a blanket. I wanted it to be big enough to cover a twin bed, or for two adults to snuggle under while watching a movie. It was huge and took me hours to complete, but was super pretty.


It probably took me about 50 hours to finish though so I decided to scale it down and make baby blankets instead. The first one I made was for my friend Heather and her baby Ethan. I don't have a picture of it, but it was white squares with blue piping.

The next one I made was for my friend Becky and her baby Khloe. I stuck with the white squares, but did purple piping instead.
The next two blankets I made while on bedrest/recovering from a C-section. The first one I made was for my friend Jeanine and her baby boy (tentatively named Micah). Her nursery is a dinosaur theme with blue, green, and orange.



This was also when I decided to start documenting my blankets before giving them away :)

The next blanket is special because it is made from yarn that I got from my great-grandma Bonnie. She passed away a year and a half ago and left all her yarn with my grandma. She in turn gave it to me. I made this blanket (and will probably make many more based on the trash bag of yarn I came home with).



Finally (kinda, I left a few blankets out because I didn't have pictures), I made a blanket for my own baby! My theme for his nursery is pretty boring, just brown and blue. I'm not really a fan of all the baby animal prints that they have out there, and so I'm just sticking with prints that are simple like polka dots or stripes. If we had a girl it would have been chocolate brown and lavender. This one is my favorite blanket, not only because of how it looks...but mostly because I get to wrap my little man in it everyday!

The one on the right is the back of the blanket, and used to be attached to the first one. I'm going to re-attach them when it starts to get cold again, and use it to cover his stroller or carseat when we go outside. It took FOREVER to make and stitch, so if you ever receive one of these from me, you will now that I love you dearly. I still probably love you even if I don't make you one of these blankets, but if you get one of them just consider it a super big compliment.

That's about it! Hopefully I'll be able to add to the collection as the years go on :)

Finding Strength

I've found recently that being a new mom gives you a lot of time to think. I'm not stuck with a bunch of errands to run (probably because I'm only the mom of one), and I actually just stay inside with a baby who eats and sleeps. This being the case, I've had a lot of time to reflect on the things that have happened recently. As you can imagine, Skylar's delivery wasn't exactly what I had planned for it to be. In fact it was quite scary and intense at times, but I was never anxious for the health or well-being of myself or my baby. This was because of the priesthood blessings I had received prior to Skylar's birth.

When we found out that I had preeclampsia we started making plans to be ready for Skylar to come early. One of the things that I felt I really needed was a priesthood blessing. This seemed silly since I was still five weeks away from my due date, but despite all of that, the night before I was induced I asked Ryan and my brother-in-law Eric to give me a blessing. In the blessing, we were told that the labor would be difficult (little did we know just HOW difficult), but that it would be that way because of the great things that Skylar has to do in this life. Strangely enough, this was the most comforting thing for me to hear. I didn't like the fact that the labor would be difficult, but I knew that it would all be for a purpose....and that Skylar would make it out whole.

During our second night in the hospital, our bishop came to visit us. This was after Skylar's heart rate had taken some scary dips, and things weren't looking so good. He and Ryan gave me another blessing at this time, and during it Bishop Meredith didn't so much talk about Skylar, but talked about me and the work that I have to do in this life, and blessed me with comfort and peace to get through the labor. This may not seem significant, and at the time I mostly just felt comforted by the blessing. However, during the events of the next day I found strength from both of these blessings.

I only once opened my eyes when I was in the OR for my C-section. I didn't want to be there, and if I kept my eyes closed I was able to pretend like I wasn't there. Juvenile? Yes...but it got me through it. Because of this, I have a somewhat limited recollection of exactly what happened while I was there. Ryan was there too, and since I'm a somewhat queasy individual when it comes to blood and guts and such, I asked him to not tell me anything about what happened there unless I specifically asked. We were talking last night about it and he happened to let slip that when I thought I had been put under by the anesthesiologist, I actually hadn't been knocked out, but had passed out. Apparently this was when they realized that I hadn't been lying about feeling the incision, and started to worry that I would go into cardiac arrest because of all the pain I had been feeling. Considering Skylar's heart rate had disappeared, I'm guessing this wasn't exactly the best case scenario my doctor would have liked. Now she had to worry about keeping me AND my baby alive.

I only bring this up because throughout the entire delivery I never once worried about the outcome. I knew that no matter what happened, my baby and I would both be alive and well. My mom was there during the scary parts, and she told me later how scared she was that we would lose Skylar. I never once let this cross my mind, not because I considered it an unthinkable horror, but because I had been promised in blessings that he would grow and develop and live a full life. This helped me so much during the scariness of our delivery because I never started to freak out about everything that was going on. Instead I was able to just close my eyes, and focus on getting us to the end of the journey. I'm grateful for the priesthood blessings we received because it gave me assurance that everything would turn out just fine, and considering the scary turns we had to take, just knowing we would make it out alive was a necessity.

I've had a lot of people ask me lately why I always seem to get stuck with the hard stuff in life. It seems that anytime I set out to do something I get the hard route. I had some scary health issues during high school, and doctor's offices and I have become fast friends....or acquaintances at least :) Some have offered the opinion that I get to do hard things because I'm strong. I sometimes tend to wonder if I bring a lot of it upon myself through choices that I make, but every time I start to say that whoever I'm talking to starts to tell me that I'm ridiculous since nothing I could have done would have changed my trial. I still think it anyway...

I think the main reason I get to do all the hard things that nobody else wants to (if I had the choice I wouldn't want to do them either) is because I handle it. This isn't because of anything I have that others don't, but because of the faith I have that everything that happens has a purpose, and that the knowledge that I will be supported and comforted in my trials. One of the scriptures that has been running through my mind lately is Philippians 4:13 which says, "I can do all things in Christ which strengtheneth me."

One of the nurses in the NICU remarked to my mom that I was very strong (she's obviously never seen me try to do a pull-up... Apparently I seemed very pulled together, but mostly I'm just too stubborn to cry in public). This is false. I am in fact very weak. I get upset by the most trivial of things, and I am far too self-centered for my own good. However, whenever I've met my hardest trials I've been smart enough to give up. Not give up on the trial, but give up trying to do it by myself. It has been during my moments of physical weakness that I have found the most spiritual strength. This has come through relying on the Lord and letting Him work with me and help me through the trial.

I think this is why I get stuck with the "hard things." Not because I'm so strong and can handle it, but because I need to be reminded that I can't do everything by myself. My trials have helped me to be grateful for the atonement and the sacrifices that have been made so I don't have to do everything by myself. I still can't say that I look forward to my next big trial, but I feel blessed in knowing that when it does come I'll be able to handle it. Not on my own, but through Christ, because He does strengthen me.

Sorry for the novel of a post. One of my English teachers told me I liked the sound of my own voice too much (later she told me that she likes the sound of my voice too....but that editors and college professors might not be as entertained by my wordiness). I figure though that this is my blog so I can write as much as I want! You're the one that chose to read it :P

He's Home!

After two and a half weeks of being separated, we're finally all back together again! I can't tell you how exciting and natural it feels to have Skylar home with us, and we are grateful to the doctors, nurses, and therapists at the NICU who have made it so he can be here with us. This journey has definitely been long, difficult, and nothing like what we had planned, but all in all it has been completely worth it. I'm sure Skylar will begin to wake up more and wear me out in the next few weeks, and I'll start to maybe wish that I could drop him off at the NICU for a few hours while I take a nap. However, in the future when I start to think of how much being a mom wears me out and how I wish I could sleep more, I will remember how content I was to finally lay our son down in his bed and know that he gets to stay with us forever.

I think he is happy to be home too!

Skylar and his daddy, pretty much a smaller version of the other.

We weren't able to get a picture of all of us together, but we're looking forward to getting family pictures taken once Skylar has chunked up a little more and I have lost the swelling and baby weight :)