Memorial Day weekend

Dear Jyzelle,

You had your first Memorial Day Weekend! Because your momma works Thursday's and Friday's this didn't really start until Saturday. Your dada had left Thursday morning to spend the long weekend with his parents in Rexburg. This did not quite go as expected so he came home Saturday night! For us our Saturday was spent getting up about 7 to go watch your cousins' Cadance, Olivia, and Averielle while your Uncle Richard did one job before they left for Utah. We went to a few yard sales in their neighborhood and your cousins' loved it! They each found an item to get and just loved looking at everyone's stuff they were trying to sell. We didn't really find anything for you though.
We then went to spend some time with Grammi. She was helping your Aunt Kimberly and cousins Abbigail and Brooklyn get ready to go camping! You were asleep when we got to their house and momma left you in your car seat while you slept. Aunt Kim walked by and saw you were awake a little while later and Grammi and I joked that you need to learn to make some kind of noise to alert us to you waking up! You always get so excited when you see your extended family with lots of smiles and feet kicks :)
We didn't do much else Saturday, we went home and cleaned up a bit then took a nice long about 3 hour nap while we waited for your dada to finish his drive home. We then bought Jack Reacher to watch, put you to bed and that was that.
On Sunday we decided we needed to go do something adventurous! So we packed some hot links and snacks for a trip to Bald Mountain and headed out! It was about a 2 hour drive. Once we got to the mountain it was only 10 miles in, but driving those roads that takes about 30 to 45 minutes! At one point we were worried we weren't going to find it, but we did! You had so much fun seeing the outdoors, it was your first long outing with that type of environment. After we finished eating we heard thunder and saw some lightning. It was REALLY loud, but you did good and just looked around trying to figure out where the sound was coming from! After we felt the first raindrop we packed up the jeep and sat in there and watched as it HAILED! It was so loud! And in just a few moments the ground looked like it was covered in an inch or more of snow!
We made our way back down the mountain and about halfway down ran into your dad's friend Dean. We chatted with him for a bit and he just thought you were the cutest little thing! He held you for a bit but you kept kicking his radio equipment on his belt so I had to take you back.
Eventually we made it back home and just had a relaxing evening finishing our movie then going to bed.
On Monday you woke up and started playing with your rattle. I later joked to mom that it's a good thing you always have a rattle in bed with you so I know when you wake up, otherwise I might not ever know! We went to IHOP and met your Grammi, PaPa, and cousins and Aunt Kimberly there. You got to eat some eggs and pancake. You then tried a "Gogurt" for the first time and LOVED it! PaPa ordered you one of your very own and you gobbled it right up! Your dada then went to help PaPa tear out a wall in Grammi's and his house to open up the upstairs a lot more. We'll have to show you pictures of what it used to look like since you won't ever remember seeing it the way your momma grew up there! We then came home had a nap then went back for a BBQ later that evening.
It was a good fun full weekend and I enjoyed getting to spend all of it with you and your dada and family!
I love you princess, you're in bed sleeping peacefully now and we'll spend more time together tomorrow.

Love, Momma :)

Oh yes, you also discovered stuffed animals this weekend. You were a big fan :)

Going to try something new

Well, I think I'm going to try a new way to write my blog. I'm going to do it in letter format, as in letters to my dear sweet princess. I want to document as much as I can about her life, and have been keeping her baby book updated, but there just isn't enough room in it for everything! So I shall try this. I will start it soon, but FIRST I want to put down all the dates of "firsts" or as close as I can get so I don't forget!

1st smile, not sure, but it started around December 18th.

1st laugh January 6th

1st time rolling from tummy to back: February 28th (for dad) Feb 29 (for Grammi and PaPa) and Mon March 4th for me!

1st time rolling from back to tummy March 29th for Grammi, March 30th for me

1st held bottle on her own March 18th

1st taste of "food" (rice cereal) about a week before 4 months (did not go well) and then about 3/20 you got the eating solid foods things down and LOVED it

Sleeping through the night: from the beginning slept a good 4 hours between feedings. At about 4 weeks slept 7 hours a night. at about 8 weeks was sleeping 8 hours a night, by 12 weeks was up to 10 hours, sometime before 4 months were consistent at 10-12 hours a night and still going strong with that. Usually goes to bed between 9 and 9:30 and wakes up anytime between 8 and 10 a.m.

Still working on sitting up on your own but on May 24 and May 25 able to sit on own for longest periods of times as to date.

First road trip to Rexburg 12/20

Road trip to Rexburg again 5/5/13

Road trip to Richfield 5/16/13

Does great in car

First time swimming to Given Hot Springs on Feb 25, 2013 (you LOVE the water)

First sign "milk" started week of 5/20/13, getting more consistent.
5/7/13 Said Momma, on 5/15/13 said momma more, started saying dadda right after that and is the word you say the most besides blah blah and bah bah

Hmmm, that's all I can think of right now. I'll try to start writing more frequently so I can remember all of your precious moments better!!

SOOO Many Updates

** Warning, details about labor below, and I am not shy! **

SOOO We did get into our house and then have our sweet little baby the next day!
It ended up being 11/1/12 at 5 pm that we signed closing paperwork, we moved our bed and bathroom stuff into the house that night (we had already moved what was in our storage unit into the garage thanks to Hubble letting us do that early!) and went to bed around 11 p.m. At 3 a.m. I started having contractions about 3:20 or so Josh woke me up telling me I've been having contractions every 5 minutes for the past 20 minutes so I need to wake up and pay attention so we know if we need to go to the hospital or not! Not that I wasn't waking up for each contraction I just kept going back to sleep not realizing how far apart they were.
I told him I didn't think they were real and they would go away so we got up, packed up a few things just in case, had some cereal and the contractions started coming about every 3 minutes! So we left for the hospital at about 4 a.m. and were there by 4:30. (We were going from Caldwell to Boise). I was scheduled to be induced at 7 a.m. anyway so the nurses let me get checked in w/o seeing how far dialated I was.
First thing I did was have a warm bath drawn up and I soaked in that for probably about an hour. Around 8 or so the doctor came in and checked me and I was only 1 cm more than I had been at my appt the previous day! At 9 they checked me again and I had gone maybe another 1/2 cm. At that point she broke my water to try and get things going a bit faster. Well this made the contractions WAY more intense and I broke down and got the epidural. I think about an hour after that they checked me again and still not much progress so they started the petocin (sp?). By this point the epidural was working it's magic so I slept pretty much all day waking up to have some water now and then. At 1 they checked me again and I was at 7 cm or so. YAY progress finally, I was thinking I'd have the baby by 5. Well sometime between 5 and 6 they checked me and I was fully dialated but wanted me to labor down for a while. (For those that don't know, this is where they told me they were going to let the contractions do the work of pushing the baby down the birth canal to make it easier when it came time for me to push.) At About 8 pm. I told the nurse I was feeling a lot of pressure down there and they told me if I wanted to I could start pushing but that it'd probably still be a while.
The nurses had mentioned earlier as well as the doctor that since I was a first time mom pushing could take 2-4 hours!!
WELL I started pushing and w/in 25 min or so they told me to stop until the Dr got there! And can I just say how UNCOMFORTABLE that was! They did say I could do little pushes, but those didn't help the pain much. haha. While we were waiting they were commenting on my babies dark hair and how much of it there was and pulling on it to show how long it was to each other! haha WEIRD or what?? Well finally the Dr showed up, got scrubbed in, and w/in about 10-15 minutes our sweet little princess, Jyzelle Aurora, mader her apperance into the world!!! It was absolutely amazing!!

Well, I think that's a good update for now... even if it is 6 months after the fact! haha. I'll try to post again soon-ish but based on my history that could be a while.

:)

as you can see she was 8 lb 4 oz and 21 inches long :)