Sleepy Time

Boy do we love our sleep around here! However, Dallin are Ellie are the only ones enjoying plenty of it! Dallin has been so good to take a 2 hour nap every day and still get 12 hours in at night. (He is so funny about hats, beanies, and hoodies lately, if they get put on, they never come off! And look at his lips in this picture, aren't they perfect??) Ellie gets an ample supply of beauty rest as well! I swear she is only awake 2 out of the 24 hours in the day. She even goes right back to sleep after she eats in the middle of the night.
Now, here is poor Paul. He is so good to change all the diapers at night and give Ellie a bottle when I had my 120 hour long spinal headache. What a MAN!!!! I want to thank him for ALWAYS being there for me and taking care of me, for loving me and supporting me. Here he is, having fallen asleep on the couch, snuggling with the babe, after a long night awake and a long day at work.
You won't find any pictures of me asleep. I am not sure what the word means currently. But you know what? All the lost sleep that we are getting is SO worth it! We have two amazing, beautiful children. Today, I was holding Ellie, snuggling her up to my face. I suddenly became so overwhelmed with the immense amount of love that I felt for her. I feel as though Paul and I are at such an amazing, yet trying time in our lives as parents. Having little ones is hard. But these little ones look to us for EVERYTHING. What an incredible responsibility Heavenly Father has given us, to trust us with His children. I love my kids and I am so grateful for them!

For the Grandma's and the Grandpa's

Yes, here are MORE pictures of the baby. With all of our family out west and wanting to see more pictures of Ellie, this is the easiest way to do it!

Here's the baby on the way home from the hospital...Big brother trying to be helpful. And not to be over shadowed by his little sister: Dallin saw his daddy going peepee on the toilet today. So he wanted to try too. He sat down on the toilet and peed! Not a lot got in the toilet, but we are so proud of Dallin's first "peepee in the potty"!!
Daddy lovin' the baby! She is so cuddly!
I am already trying to control Ellie. She was awake, and I was trying to get a picture of her with her eyes open. She would not keep her hands out of her mouth and face. So I finally held them down to take the picture. You can tell by the expression on her face that she had a few choice words for me! Here's what happens when the daddy is holding the little baby, and the BIG baby wants to be held, too!

We have had a week so far with this little one here. I say, "a week" without any adjectives because I can't think of the perfect word to describe it. Euphoric, tiring, exciting, painful, happy, overwhelming, etc., etc. We have determined that I have a spinal headache, not fun. So I have been flat on my back the last couple days, trying to get better. It was one of those blessing in disguise. This may sound weird, but I never realized the strong feelings of taking care of my family that I have. I didn't know I had them, but I am glad that I do. I see it as a blessing for me to have the responsibility of taking care of my family.

We were lucky enough to have a small taste of Clint and Jordan (Paul's brother and sis-in-law) here for Thanksgiving. They spent their vacation finishing Paul's "honey do" list, cleaning my house, cleaning up Emmi's throw-up, and leaving early in order to get 104 degree fever Emmi back home to her doctor. Despite the craziness of it all, we were glad that we got to see them for a day!

We were also blessed to have my sweet relief society presidency (awesome ladies from our church) bring over Thanksgiving dinner. Paul already had a turkey thawing in the fridge, so that was all that we had to cook for the day. Even though Paul, Clint and Jordan were perfectly capable of putting together an amazing meal, with me out of commission, it put my mind at ease knowing that we would have a great dinner with no fuss. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It is always nice knowing that without family around, we are still taken care of by people we love.

Bonus: My headache is getting better. I was able to rest all morning and felt good enough to make dinner tonight. I am starting to feel the affects of my efforts, but it felt good to get up and be somewhat productive. On the down side, my prescription pain meds are now gone, boohoo. I guess I had to say goodbye to them sometime ;)

More Pictures at the Hospital

If you want to hear the whole story... Here's the scoop: On Sunday, I was having extremely mild, irregular contractions all day long. I wasn't even sure they were actual contractions, so I didn't mention them to Paul. I didn't want to get his hopes, or mine, up. We went to bed late, midnight, got woken up by a call from Paul's work about an hour a a half later. An hour and a half after that I thought my water broke. I think we were being prepared for the sleepless nights that were to come. So we got out of bed, got everything ready to go, and dropped Dallin off at some friends of ours. By this time, I was actually thinking that I was wrong about my water breaking and was about to go back home. I then started having contractions four minutes apart, so we headed to the hospital for real. We got to the hospital and found out for sure that my water didn't break and I was only dilated to a 2. Because I was a VBAC patient, they thought it was best to keep me there so that I could be monitored the whole time. This was at 4 am. Six hours later, the doctor came in and broke my water, contractions started hurting, I got my magical epidural, and everything slowed down. My contractions all but stopped. So they gave me pitocin and at 4:53, out she came! So far, she sleeps and eats and sleeps some more during the day. At night, she eats and eats, and eats some more. Luckily, she sleeps in between. We all can't get enough of her. Dallin loves to hold her. If she is upstairs and he wants to go downstairs, he wants Ellie to come too. When we pray, he has to make sure that she is folding her arms for the prayer too! He loves to give her kisses. He is a natural at this big brother stuff! Paul, as well, loves to hold her and kiss her and love her. She has been a really good baby in our family. We are so fortunate to have her in our lives. We are so grateful for all the many prayers and thoughts that were given in our behalf as we brought Ellie into this world. It has been such a great experience, full of blessings and faith. Now onto being a family of four!

She's here!

"Ellie"

Elizabeth June Duncan

November 19, 2007

4:53 pm

8 lb 6 oz

21 inches long

PERFECT and CHUBBY!!!!!

more details later!

Poll Time and a Conversation with a Man

The baby's due November 27th

Let us know what you think:

When she will come?

How much will she weigh?

Will she have hair?

Will she really be a she?

Will she have cheeks like Dallin?

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This morning, after doing my hair, I mentioned to Paul that I needed to get my hair trimmed. We have this specific conversation every time, and it us usually word for word:

Me: My hair is driving me crazy, I need to get it trimmed.

Paul: I thought you were going to grow your hair out.

Me: I am, I said I need a trim, not a hair cut.

Paul: But that's the same thing, what's the point of getting it cut all the time if you want to grow it out.

Me: There is a difference between a cut and a trim. I just need to get my ends trimmed so that I don't get split ends and so my hair stays healthy and doesn't get damaged.

Paul: I still don't get it, plus, it costs money to get your hair cut.

I love you Paulie-pooh!

A few of my favorite things.

I thought I would write about a few of my favorite things. These are not in any particular order, and I certainly have a lot of other favorite things that you won't see here. The first couple are my boys. I love them so much and they make everyday worth living. Paul and Dallin make me laugh, cry, live, love, and they are so crazy! Here are a few examples of the how they make me smile. Dallin loves to sneak up on my bare feet and scare them. He loves to crawl around like a puppy and lick me on the cheek. Paul cleans my toilets! One night, after putting Dallin to bed, Paul announced that he was going to take me to a "high school" dance. He told me to go put on a dress that I might have worn then and he put on something he might have worn. We then turned on mid to late 90"s music and danced in our living room. We even took pictures. I love it when Paul is silly and spontaneous like that.

Some more of my favorite things: CHOCOLATE, a good cheap pizza, and fresh fruit! Chocolate, enough said! We had a lot of Halloween candy left over. It didn't last long, maybe a couple days. Paul and I both love chocolate. Pizza...gotta love the Hot and Ready $5 pizza from Little Caesar's. This one has save me many nights when making dinner just didn't happen. And fruit, yummy fruit. During the summer, Paul and I bought a huge watermelon every time we went grocery shopping, about once a week. Paul even planted cantaloupe and watermelon in our garden this
summer. Here are the fruits of his labor. We got one melon from each plant and they were both about the size of a large softball, but they were yummy! Dallin is also a huge fruit lover. Yesterday, I gave him a small apple to munch on. About 15 minutes later, he was holding the stem only, having eaten the whole apple, seeds and all.

One thing that I know I will miss here in a little bit, is sleeping in. I love to sleep in and I use Dallin as my alarm clock on the days that I don't have to be any where on time. The other morning, I got to sleep in until 8:45 am. Man, that was so nice! I definitely cherish the sleep that I am getting right now and I am so grateful that Dallin is a good sleeper, too!

One of my favorite things: Being silly and having fun. Paul thinks that I am weird because I don't mind being embarrassed. We recently went to dinner with some friends of ours to a Mexican restaurant here in town. Although my birthday was two weeks ago, our friend secretly told the waiter that it was my birthday that day. So after we finished eating, I was surrounded, topped with a sombrero, my face got smeared with whipped cream, and they all serenaded me! I tried to lick all the whipped cream off my face, but I couldn't reach my nose and the fried ice cream was yummy, I must say! Dallin and I love to dance around and be silly all time. Lately though, it is hard for me to dance around and when we do, Dallin's head bumps into my belly a lot, but we still try to have fun. As a family, on weekends, we love to set up our air mattress and bounce around and watch movies and hang out. We love having fun.

My last favorite thing today is my favorite color: GREEN, grass green. Think of your favorite color. How does it make you feel when you see it, wear it, or maybe eat it (I love to eat green jello!)??? I love to see the color green. I have green shoes, green pj bottoms, green shirts. Green makes me feel calm, happy and at peace. I live to eat celery, broccoli, green peppers, and cucumbers. Green beans are yummy, too! I am always drawn to the color green. I just love the color green.

Explanation

Man, blogger is giving me a headache lately.

I didn't explain about the pictures below because by the time I got the pictures to show up, I was done.

We carved pumpkins "as a family". Which means that:

Dallin played with the guts and drew on the pumpkin with marker.
Paul carefully designed a face, and carved and sculpted the pumpkin (then washed off the marker with alcohol).
Kristen took lots of pictures and cleaned up the mess afterward.

Oh, and this is my 100th post. Pretty boring, I know. I had huge plans of posting a couple funny videos that Paul made, but, again, blogger is being dumb. Or am I the dumb one? Paul can't even get them to post and he's the smart one in the family. So maybe for the 101st post you will get to see the videos and we will celebrate then. Or maybe I will erase this post eventually so I can have a really cool 100th post. Stay tuned...