West valley

We absolutely loved our apartment in south salt lake, but the neighbors, not so much. The place clearly didn't have the most awesome construction so even the every day living noises of our upstairs neighbors (walking around, music, snoring) was intrusive. But we couldn't fault them for that. Unfortunately, it was much more than that. They kept strange hours and had 2 very energetic children. Almost every night in the 11 o clock hour, they would come home and make the biggest racket... I'm talking yelling and jumping off things and running around. They woke our baby up almost daily for months. Between the 11 PM nightly ritual and the daytime noise, it was often more than once a day. We tried to be understanding. People make noise. But our baby was just learning to sleep and everyone was suffering when they woke her up over and over. We tried talking to them. We tried banging on the ceiling with a broom. We even got the landlord involved. Nothing changed. As our lease expiration approached, we realized we were going to have to move. It was hard decision since we liked the layout of the apartment so much, but it had to be. We searched for an new apartment for a long time, and nothing really seemed to click. We kind of wanted to try living in a big complex since we had such a good experience in one in Philly. Maybe that was the problem. Anyway, we finally found something that was ok, and we were running out of time, so we took it. We were able to get a 9 month lease, so we weren't committing for too long. We knew we were expecting another baby and thought we might want a 3 bedroom place after the baby came and didn't want to be stuck in a long lease in the 2 bedroom. We were also able to get a first floor unit, which is really nice for moving in and out.  So it had 2 bedrooms, 2 baths. Here are some pictures I took of the place.

Living Room 

It was small. Not much room for Clara to play.

 Kitchen

Clara's Room

Walk in Closet for Clara

It looks like I never got around to photographing the patio, dining area, hall bathroom, our bedroom, or our bathroom. A quick verbal description for memory's sake: patio off the living room with a big storage closet, which was really nice to have. Off the kitchen was a dining area, but for us, it became an office/misc area after the baby was born and we had to move stuff out of our room to fit him. In the hall was a large hall bathroom, and laundry machines. Our bedroom was at the end of the hall, and was medium sized, with a master bath. The master closet was in the bathroom and wasn't separated by a door or anything (not my favorite, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be).

Honestly, I'm not surprised at all that I didn't get pics of these rooms. When we moved in, I was newly pregnant and sick sick sicky sick. So I was either sick, quite pregnant, or had a newborn baby the whole time we lived there. The place never really got pulled all together in the first place as far as unpacking and hanging out decor and all that. We knew in the back of our minds that we would probably leave at the end of the 9 month term anyway. The place did have some perks. Zack could ride public transportation door to door from our house to work. He did have to ride 1 trax line to another to the frontrunner, and it was an hour each way, but I had free access to the car at all times. It had enough space for us. It was ok. But we could still hear the neighbors more that we liked, it was literally right next to the freeway, we decided we weren't fans of the huge apartment complex scene after all, and we really got cramped once the baby came. Plus the length of Zack's work commute was really starting to wear on us. So when our lease was coming to an end, we decided to get out of there. 

A birth story

This will be a long post with lots of over sharing. As always, feel free to move onto the next one if you desire.
My pregnancy with Lincoln was not fun. I started feeling pukey sick before the pregnancy test even read positive. We moved into our apartment in West Valley while I was in the worst part of my morning sickness, so that was kind of a fiasco. It took months to get that apartment put together. It never really did come all the way together in the end. I laid on the couch for weeks just feeling like I was going to die and praying that somehow my toddler and I would survive the day. We stayed in our pjs and watched movies most days.  Somehow I was still pushing my way through 2 days of 12 hour shifts at work each week. Around 16 weeks or so, I started feeling a little better, and actually probably felt less nauseous this time than I did with my last pregnancy from then on. But I felt huge and exhausted and was barely holding it together. As my pregnancy went on, they loaded me up with nursing students at work every single day I worked for weeks. I was stressed.
It wasn't that surprising when I showed up at my 32 week appointment and had protein in my urine and a high blood pressure. Because of my history of preeclampsia, but doctor ordered some labs, a urine test, and bed rest. That meant no more work. Other than that, I was not able to adjust my activity level too much because I have a toddler at home. I tried to pick her up less.
My labs came back okay and my urine protein level was a bit below the diagnostic threshold for preeclampsia, so they diagnosed me with gestational hypertension. From that point on, I had to go see my doctor once per week. Additionally, I had to go to the hospital twice a week for a non-stress test.

Non stress test

Zack and Clara came with me to a couple of my non stress tests. Clara enjoyed sitting in the chairs like mommy.

Essentially, they hooked us up to a monitor and watched to baby's heart rate for a certain amount of time to watch for any signs of distress. If he was not active enough during the test, they would stick a buzzer on my stomach and buzz it to wake him up. I always hated when they did that because he would startle like crazy. Poor baby.
Guys, lots of that stuff sucked. 3 appointments per week is a lot. Plus, I absolutely couldn't drag Clara with me to my non stress tests by myself because I was strapped to a chair the entire time, so I had to arrange babysitting for that almost every time (thanks so much to Zack's mom who did the bulk of that for me!). Some weeks, I secretly hoped my blood pressure would soar into critical range or that my urine protein level would finally reach the level for preeclampsia so I could just have to baby already and quit dragging my huge body to the appointments. Terrible, right? I was also stressed about taking so much time off work without actually having a baby in my arms.
Because of all the problems I was having, I thought they might induce me at 37 weeks like they did with Clara, but my doctor was convinced that we should push on to 39, so we did. She did strip my membranes at 38 weeks, but nothing happened as a result.
I turned 39 weeks pregnant on a Sunday, so we scheduled my induction for Monday, May 12th. They wanted me to call at 6:00 that morning and they would tell me what time to come in for my induction.

Waiting to find out what time to go in to the hospital

I set the alarm and got up super early and the answer was that I should call back at 8. I did so, and they still weren't sure but told me that I should call back at 9 if they hadn't already called me back. I had a feeling that they would call and say "come now" so I got all ready. Lo and behold, when they called just before 9, they basically said "how soon can you get here?" Off we headed.
After getting Clara all squared away, we arrived at the hospital around 10.

If I remember right, I was dilated to a 2 and 80% effaced when they started my labor. At 11:00, they started my on pitocin.  After about an hour, I did start to have some pretty painful contractions, but I got up to use the bathroom and the contractions basically went away after that. When they checked me at 1:00, I was dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced. They went ahead and broke my water. Just like last time, it was a TON of amniotic fluid that came out. It was actually pretty comical. We were all just cracking up and fluid just kept coming and coming.  Soon after that, Zack left to get some lunch, and while he was gone, my contractions really amped up.  With Clara, I asked for the epidural pretty much as soon as I felt a twinge of pain.  This time, I tried to power through it for a while.  I had not been at the hospital for very long at that point and I wondered if I was just being a total wuss.  But my nurse came to check on me and actually asked if I was ready for my epidural and I said that I absolutely was, so they sent in the anesthesiologist. Zack got back from lunch just in time for my epidural at 3:00. Soon after the epidural, I felt way nauseous so they gave me some zofran via IV and I felt much better. At 3:30, I was dilated to a 4.5 and 80% effaced. A check at 5:00 showed me dilated to a 6 and 90% effaced. At 5:45 I was dilated to a 7 and 90% effaced. At 6:50, I was dilated to a 9 and 100% effaced. Throughout all this time, I was pretty comfortable and relaxed. My epidural this time made my legs WAY more numb than the one I had with Clara. I couldn't really control them at all. I had to get help any time I wanted to move, which was a little frustrating.

I was also anxious to get the baby out maybe, but otherwise fine. My nurse had a student with her, so I had 2 people checking me every time, but that wasn't a big deal to me. I was a nursing student once, so I get it. Around 7:00, there was a shift change and I got a new nurse.  

At 7:30, they had me start pushing. I was feeling some pressure and such, but I was somewhat nervous about starting to push already because the nurse said that the baby was still a little high. That's probably part of the reason I ended up having to push for quite a while. With Clara, I was at a teaching hospital and the room was just full of people when I was pushing. At one point, they pulled one of my doctors out of the room to sing happy birthday to her, I remember. Everyone was just chatting away and it felt kind of lighthearted and stress free in a lot of ways, like a big baby party. This time, it was Zack, my doctor, and my nurse, and frankly, I thought it was more awkward that a room full of people.  I felt like we should be making conversation or something, but I was super worn out from pushing after a while and did not really want to talk. Then the doctor and nurse started gossiping about workplace politics, which seemed like a weird thing to do in front of a patient, but what do I know.
Finally, at 8:51, our baby boy was born.

As he came out, the doctor and the nurse both said that he was a big baby, and when he was weighed, he came in at 9 pounds even, 21 inches long.

The pushing really wore me out this time, much more than it did with Clara even though I pushed longer with her, but other than that, it was pretty easy and comfortable. I did have to get some stitches, but enjoyed just cuddling my baby and trying to feed him. I love those first moments together.

First family photo (sans Clara)

Our view from the recovery room was not as good as the view we had in Philly, but we were surprised and happy to have a view of the capitol building and downtown.

When Clara met Lincoln for the first time (the next day), we had her bring him a stuffed bear that she made at build a bear. We had some toy cars to give to Clara as a gift from Lincoln. She loved it.

Meeting baby brother for the first time

Even though LDS hospital would not have been our first choice, we ended up there for a lot of complicated reasons. I don't regret it. It was a nice experience, all of the staff who cared for me were excellent, and we brought home a healthy, chubby little baby to join our family. 

Zack's birthday

Zack doesn't really get to mega excited about his birthday, but I like to do something to celebrate. Since his birthday was on a Sunday this year, we decided to make a celebration of it the day before. Things were a little rocky at times, but we still made the best of it.
In the morning, we had planned to go to breakfast and mini golf, but due to some time constraints, we ended up just grabbing some McDonald's breakfast before our game. Zack whomped me at mini golf. I was super pregnant. That's my excuse. We were kinda bummed that our breakfast date didn't work out, but mini golf was fun and it was very nice outside, which is always a bonus.
In the afternoon, we were headed to the zoo when we learned that there had been a water leak at Zack's parents' house in the room where we had been storing a bunch of our baby stuff. We ended up having to go over there to scope out the damage and to move our stuff so it wouldn't be affected any more. Not exactly how we wanted to spend some time on Zack's birthday celebration day, but it turned out okay because we were able to make it to the zoo just before they closed the gate.
The lions were right by the window.

Even later on, we had planned to go to the drive-in for a movie. Our babysitting fell through, and we almost ditched it, but then we decided to just go for it and take Clara with us. We put a kid movie on the tablet and she watched that while we watched our movie. We were a little snug with all 3 of us in the back of my parents' truck, but it worked out just fine, and we were glad we decided to go after all.

We count ourselves blessed to have Zack in our lives. Next year we celebrate the big 30, so we'll have to think of something extra fun to do.

A 2 year old

It's true what everyone says about how little ones grow up way to fast. Clara turned 2 on April 27th. Crazy. She wanted an "Elmo birthday" so we went with a Sesame Street theme. Our current apartment is too small to host a party so we had it at my parents' house the day before her birthday.
The decor:

Ha ha, we tried ^^

The balloons were a big hit.

We had Snuffy's favorite meal of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. It happens to be Clara's favorite too.

After dinner, Clara enjoyed opening presents. She is at the stage where she wants to play with each gift as she opens it and it is hard to get her to open another present. But she really enjoyed every single thing she got.

Yeah, I was super pregnant. ^

After presents, we had cake. We just got a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and added a couple of Elmo candies to the top. We figured Clara could really care less about the cake and we wanted something yummy for the adults to enjoy. She blew out the candles, but wasn't really interested in eating any with all the fun toys around to occupy her time instead.

Thanks to our immediate families and my grandma for coming and making her special day so delightful.

Easter 2014

Holidays are so much fun with little kids. Clara had a great time with Easter this year.

My sister and I took our girls to see the Easter Bunny at the mall. I talked it up for weeks beforehand. Clara was too scared to go anywhere near Santa this last Christmas, so I thought that if I talked up the Easter Bunny, she'd be less apprehensive. We even went to the mall a couple of days before and just looked at him from a distance. She seemed really interested. Well, we did better than we did with Santa in that we actually got her on his lap. She was not happy about it though. Marseille was totally chill and cheesed it up for the camera.

A few times before Easter rolled around, Grandma Beth painted Clara's nails spring colors and they called them Easter egg fingers.

Clara got to do a little Easter egg hunt at her Noyce grandparents' house. 

It took a lot of encouragement to get her to keep looking for eggs once she discovered the candy inside the first ones she found, but eventually she got them all. Jackpot.

 On Easter morning, Clara got to raid her own little Easter basket, which she loved. We tried not to do too much candy, which is good because her grandparents each gave her a basket with plenty of delicious treats.

I didn't get a single picture of her in her Easter dress. Best mom ever. But here she is chilling at grandparents' house after church. We had a low key dinner with family at my parents' house to polish off the day.