Major Catch-Up

I feel like every post I write is either a pregnancy post or includes something about "Catch-Up."  Welcome to real life, I suppose!  Since things are going to be busy the next couple weeks and then I'm having a baby, I really needed to get these pictures up so I don't fall behind with Pyper and her birth story and pictures!

Just because my girls are cute, and I LOVE that they're so close in age and are best friends!

Our driveway is a 2.5 car width driveway, but only 1.5 widths of that is paved, the last portion is gravel.  Unfortunately, that means weed grow up through that section of the driveway.  The girls have taken to calling it "the woods" and like to go sit under the tree in there.  Since this picture was taken, we have sprayed the weeds and invested in a weed whacker.  Ha!

I found Lex reading the Bible one day:

We bought Lex a little golf club set and during golf season DJ would take her out during practice (he's the head golf coach) and let her hit around.  She loved it so much!  

I bought the girls goggles for summer, and naturally they needed to wear them around the house.  Which was awesome.

And Mia needed to wear hers to the store.  Also awesome.

Just the cutest 1-year-old around!

I got the girls new beach towels, which happen to be HUGE, so they use them to lay on and to cover up with:

We went out for ice cream after the Payson Temple open house, and Lex insisted she wanted pink ice cream.  I was not interested in anything but chocolate, so her Daddy, being the awesome guy he is, chose a pink ice cream to share with her!

A little cousin Play-Doh time!

For my birthday I made a chocolate and regular swirled cheesecake with chocolate ganache and Oreo's... it was divine!  My mom was a little put out with me that I made my own birthday dessert, but there you go.

In May, Mia moved from her crib to a toddler bed.  I never planned on moving her out of a crib this young, but one night she figured out how to climb out and fell to the floor (while DJ and I were gone and Ranee' was home with the girls, which is kinda funny), so we decided for her safety to take the front rail off the bed.  Lexsi moved to a toddler bed when she was about 17 months old and had zero issues with the transition.  Mia is a little more adventurous than Lex, so it took a little bit for her to get used to it.  The first night she fell asleep in the middle of the room, but the second night she only had to be put back in bed once and then stayed there.  These days, she sleeps under Lexsi's bed or her own bed at least half of the time.  It's a little weird... I think she wants to be close to Lexsi, and likes the feeling of being closed in, so she just crawls under a bed to sleep.  Whatever makes her happy I guess!

The girlies reading books to each other:

My sweet tiny girl:

We went to Lovell the last week of May, which was awesome!  I was worried I wouldn't make it there this summer since I'm having a baby right in the middle, but luckily DJ got done with school before Memorial Day, so we got to make the trip!  My girls had an absolute blast with all the family there!

We took Lex to visit Mammie's parents' and sister's graves, and she thought it was the coolest thing ever!

We gave the girls ice cream cones for the first time ever... they ate the ice cream off the top and then stopped.  They didn't seem to understand that they could eat the cone too.

Lex shared a room with Savanna, and developed an obsession with covering herself with pillows (???):

When we got back to Brigham, my mom came up with Josh's 3 girls to visit and we went to the pool!

The next weekend Josh and Kristen got married, which was great!  I went down on Thursday evening to help my mom get everything ready (the wedding was in her back yard on Saturday morning), and DJ came with the girls on the day of the wedding.  It was a big job to put it all together in a day, but we did it and I think it turned out well!  I'm just glad these two and their 6 kids got to be together!

Mia sharing a drink with Grandma Kaiser:

Meg came in for the wedding, and she and her kids stayed for about a week in Provo.  Lexsi and Annie had such a great time together!  They played together nicely for hours every day without fighting or being bossy or mean... it was awesome!

Since my girls love being outside so much, I bought them a water table to play with this summer!  So far it's been a hit.

We spend time outside in swimsuits playing with water nearly every day.  And of course we need frozen treats to help stay cool!

Mia is my fruit girl, and will try any new fruit I give her!  It's awesome having a child who loves fresh produce as much as I do!

Mia and Cosmo:

Girlies cooling off with popsicles:

We went to Bear Lake last Monday, and it was the perfect day for it!  There were less people there than I've ever seen before, the temperature was awesome, the water was warm, and the girls had an absolute blast digging on the beach!  They didn't want to leave!  We'll go up one more time before I have this baby, since after she's born I won't be able to get in the water up to my incision, because it will obviously need to heal more before I'm submerged in water-- particularly lake water.  But we'll probably still go back after she's born at least once and I'll just be careful to stay dry.  We love Bear Lake too much to stay away! 

These girls are the very best.  They have their moments where they fight (like, wrestle each other fight), but generally they are the best of friends!  I love how close they are in age, and I love that Pyper and Mia will be just as close in age!  Having babies so close together is wild, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

For literally at least 20 years, I've wanted a covered swing.  This week, my dream came true!  We bought a swing and put it on our back patio, so now we have a super comfortable spot to sit and watch the girls while they play in the yard!

And that's it for now.  Hopefully I'll stay caught up a little better, but I'm not holding my breath... haha!

37 Weeks

Well, believe it or not, I'm only 2 WEEKS away from having this baby girl!  Everything has been going super well with this pregnancy, which I'm grateful for.  I've actually been pretty surprised with how unaffected I have been with the heat this summer.  I expected that having a baby in the middle of July would make for a miserable summer, but it really hasn't.  I think it's another one of those things that gets blown out of proportion just a little.  I mean, I'm blessed to have AC in my house, so I spend a good chunk of time indoors.  When I do go outside, yes it's hot, but when the temperature is in the 90's most days, EVERYONE is hot.  I don't think I'm the only one experiencing the heat.  So, I don't know... it hasn't seemed like a big deal to me.

I think the thing that has struck me most this pregnancy is how rude people can be!  I think it's mostly unintentional, but still... there's just never a reason to tell someone they look miserable or huge.  For example, last night I had an older lady ask me how long it was til I had this baby, so I responded that I was 2 weeks away.  She exclaimed, "Two weeks??  You don't look like you can be that far along!"  While I laughed and was in the middle of thanking her for her kind words, another older lady jumped in and declared, "Yes she does!  She looks miserable enough to be that far along!"  Now, I mostly just laughed it off and replied that I do feel that far along, but... really?!?  The thing is, I'm NOT miserable!  I don't feel miserable at all!  I feel pregnant, but I've never felt miserable about being pregnant.  I have uncomfortable moments, I get aches and pains and everything that comes with being pregnant.  I just don't understand why, when someone is pregnant, other people suddenly lose their filter and think it's acceptable to tell them they look like crap???  Or that they're looking huge?  Trust me, I know I'm big.  Really.  But I actually feel pretty great about my size.  I've gained 30 pounds this pregnancy, I'm eating  healthy, drinking lots of water, and I'm just pretty healthy in general.  I don't have high blood pressure or other medical concerns... I'm healthy.  I'm big cause I'm pregnant.  And I'm totally okay with that-- it's just unfortunate that other people don't seem to be!  I know I'm a little bigger than I was with my other pregnancies (mostly in my face and bum!), but hello?  This is my third baby in less than three and a half years.  I started bigger than I have other times.  And I still fit into all my maternity clothes that I bought when I was pregnant with Lex, so clearly I can't be THAT much bigger!  My belly is measuring normal to a little small, just like with the other girls.  So, yeah.  Just keep in mind that just because someone is pregnant doesn't give you the right to say rude things.  If you wouldn't say it to an overweight person, {"Hey, I noticed you're overweight, you must be miserable!} it's not acceptable to say it to a pregnant person either.  It's just one of those things, where I can joke about being fat all I want, but as soon as someone else tells me I am?  Unacceptable.  I don't know why, but there you have it.

On a lighter note, I just have to say that maxi dresses are my new best friend!  They are SO comfortable in the summer!  I found some on clearance a few weeks ago and ended up buying 5... cause who doesn't want to wear a maxi every day?  I think maxis are always cozy, but particularly when you're super pregnant and don't want to worry about how things fit or what to wear every day, you just throw on a dress and you're good to go!  It's the best.

I'm to the point in this pregnancy that my sleeping ability is awful.  At least every other night I wake up in the night and stay awake for several hours.  I'm incredibly grateful right now that my husband is a school teacher so he's home for the summer!  He has been getting up with the girls every day around 8, and I get to keep sleeping, usually til around 9 (but sometimes I sleep in a ridiculous amount, like til after 10).  It's such a blessing!  And the fact that he'll be home for 6 weeks after Pyper is born is just incredible. I love that he chose the career he did!

This coming Saturday is the 4th of July, and we have some of DJ's family coming up for it.  I'm super excited!  From that day until the following Sunday (the 12th), we'll be doing stuff with family, so really I have Monday-Friday this week to get everything ready to have this baby girl.  We'll be leaving our girls with my mom on Sunday the 12th, then coming back up to Brigham to have this little lady on the 13th.  It's coming so soon and we're getting so excited!

Here's my sweet Pyper girl at about 32 weeks:

  Me at 33 weeks, 5 days:

35 weeks:

37 weeks (today) in the same dress, cause I'm unintentionally cool like that:

Weight Gain:  30 pounds
Cravings:  Fresh produce and Sonic ice

April Catch Up

I fell behind on my blogging again-- imagine that!  I spend my Sunday afternoons doing Family History, and I need to make a better point of keeping up with my own little family's happenings.  Since my last blog about the fam, here's what's been going on:

Lex got her cast off (hooray!):

The girls have been playing outside in the sun a lot:

We spend Easter weekend down in Provo, watching General Conference.  Mia has become obsessed with the song "Immortals" and loves to sing along:

Easter baskets and dresses... I did dress up dresses this year since Easter was on Conference weekend, so the girls wore their new church dresses the week before:

On the Monday after General Conference, I finally got a new car!!! I had been carless since the first week of January, and let me tell you... 4 months with no car is zero percent fun.  We got a 2006 Toyota Sienna, and I'm obsessed with it!  It has such great space, tons of storage and you just can't beat the functionality of it!  Now we're ready for Pyper to get here to fill up a little more space :)

Mia has been loving helping me out in the kitchen:

I made the girls a little play washing machine, which they love!  

Mia helping me make taco soup.  Letting the girls help in the kitchen from a young age has always been important to me... it makes a mess and takes longer, but I am a firm believer in teaching them to help from a young age!

After she was already filthy from making soup, I decided it wouldn't hurt to take the girls out to play in the puddles in the pickle ball court from the rain the day before.  I've done this with Lex lots of times, and she has always just thrown rocks in.  Mia was, of course, more adventurous and it didn't take long for her to walk right into the puddles and start digging in the mud.  Lex experimented with that a little, but was still much more reserved than Mia.  They were so happy and entertained with it, that it was completely worth the extra load of laundry I had to do that day!

We've been working on our yard lately.  One Saturday I ripped out all the weeds from the front flower bed:

Lex entertained herself by singing "Everything is Awesome!" over and over in the yard:

One day we got a lot of snow, so I bought some Play-Doh and the girls had a blast with it! 

The girls ran out into the yard when we got home on the snowy day, even though they weren't dressed to play in the snow.  They didn't last long.

We had an awesome 3D ultrasound of Pyper!  I think she totally looks like my other girls, and I'm SO excited to snuggle her!

We went up to visit DJ at a golf tournament in Tremonton one morning and it was really windy, so I put the seats down in the back of the van and let then have a "donut picnic:"

Last Sunday, the girls were in our bedroom laughing their heads off.  DJ and I were out in the living room talking about how awesome it is that they're so great at entertaining each other now... then DJ went into the room and discovered they had found a bag of Nerds jelly beans and dumped them all out and were eating all of them... silly girls!

We've been spending lots of time out on the trampoline, which is awesome!

When you have little girls, you expect to spend your time dressing up and having tea parties, right?  That's kind of what it's been with Lexsi.  Mia, however is an adventurer, and is always climbing on things... and falling off.  A few days ago I heard a crash and then screaming, and I ran out to the kitchen and found her with a bleeding mouth.  I'm pretty sure she climbed on the table and fell off and bit into her lip.  She's just too adventurous for her own good!

I finally finished the shower curtain for our main bathroom:

One of the best parts of DJ being a coach is that the girls have learned how to entertain themselves in bleachers.  A few days ago I took them to a track meet at Box Elder and it was fun for me to be able to watch and fun for them to be outside playing!

Yesterday we (meaning, mostly DJ) tore up our whole back yard to get ready to get new grass in!

Babies

On Sunday I realized that this week is Nationality Infertility Week, and I immediately went back to my first-ever blog post about my struggle with fertility.  You can read it HERE, and read DJ's take on it HERE.  Reading these two posts broke my heart and totally made me cry.  It took me back to the place I was in, which was so raw and painful.  About 4 months after that initial post (and nearly two years of trying to have a baby), I finally was able to get pregnant with Lexsi.  After having her, it took 8 months being off of birth control before I got pregnant with Mia (and no, I wasn't nursing).  After Mia I never went on birth control and it took me 13 months to get pregnant with Pyper.  I'm just not a very fertile person.  I'm used to that, and it's mostly okay.  I've been thinking a lot this week about fertility and where I am now in comparison to where I've been.

Something that struck me as I read that first blog post I wrote about my struggle with infertility was that I said that I knew that I'd understand why I've had this trial some day.  Since it's been 4 years since I made that statement, I began to wonder if I've really gained any clarity since then, and I feel like I have.  I still don't know everything and every reason, I'm certain.  But there are definitely some things I've learned along the way:

First, I've learned compassion.  I've learned to be really, truly empathetic to those around me who struggle with infertility.  I feel like I can be a really great listening ear and really really understand, which is something I've realized that everyone needs.  Sometimes our biggest trials can help us connect with and help others in ways we never could have without those trials.  I have several people who are very close to me and I love dearly that have and/or are struggling with infertility, and believe it or not, I'm grateful that I've been in there shoes so that I can understand their feelings and do my best to help them through this awful time.

Side note/tangent:  I've seen lots of blogs this week on infertility, and many of them say things along the lines of, "You don't know what I'm going through because you've only been trying to get pregnant for 3 months."  I have a serious problem with that.  Just because someone hasn't been trying to get pregnant as long as you have doesn't mean it's not a real, painful struggle for them.  You never know what someone else is going through, so don't say things to demean them.  I only had to wait 20 months to get pregnant with Lexsi.  Others have to wait 10 years, and maybe still don't get the blessing of having biological children.  Does that make my struggle any less significant?  Absolutely not.  We all need to learn to lift each other up in any time of need rather than act like it's not a big deal because it hasn't been a trial for someone else as it has been for you.

Next, I've learned-- really really come to understand-- that Heavenly Father is in charge.  Not me.  Not my plans.  Not being on birth control or not.  He's the boss of my life, and that's the way it should be.  I trust Him completely, and that's something I couldn't say when I started this process, at least when it came to when to have a family.

Along those same lines, I've realized that it was a blessing not to be able to have my kids when I first wanted to simply because of my age.  NOT because I wouldn't have been a good mom at 22.  It has nothing to do with that.  But at that time, I obviously had no idea that my babies would need to be born via c-section.  I don't have any other option if I want my babies to get here safely.  Because of that, I don't get to have the family I've always imagined.  From the time I was young, I always said I was going to have 6 kids.  The doctor I had with Lexsi told me I could definitely have 3-4 since I had to have c-sections.  My doctor with Mia told me he could guarantee me 3.  At the time, I was pretty upset about it.  3 was certainly not enough.  Then, when I was on the operating table delivering Mia, the doctor remarked how thin my uterus was.  I didn't think anything of it at the time, but later I started to understand the implications of that.  If I have a thin uterus, it's not likely it will be able to handle housing a lot more kids.  It just won't.  It's not safe for the baby or me.  Because of that, and since I've had a year and a half to process that information, I've kind of come to the conclusion that this is going to be my last baby.  I'm not saying that is a definite.  I would LOVE to have more!  And my dream would to be able to get to 4 and hopefully have a little boy in our house too.  BUT-- if the doctor tells me it's unsafe to have any more kids, that's it for me.  It's not worth risking my life to try to expand my family.  Now, to bring this back to my age-- if I had gotten pregnant immediately and discovered I could only have three kids and be done having them by the time I was 25?  That would have been much much harder for me to handle.  Instead, I'll be 28 when Pyper is born, and really, my body is feeling it this time around.  This pregnancy has already been much harder on me than the others, and I'm not even that old!  So the thought that this could be my last is easier to swallow.  Again, I still hope that it's not.  But if it is, I know Heavenly Father will help me handle it.  Will I have hard days when I wonder why the heck my body can't handle having more kids?  Uh, yeah.  When my sisters and friends get to keep having kids and I don't will it be hard to deal with?  I'm sure it will be.  But I do absolutely trust that Heavenly Father will do what's best for me and my family.  I know that whenever I'm done having kids, it will be a challenge but it'll be okay.  I have already thought a lot about fostering other kids as well.  There are SO MANY children who need good, supportive homes and if my body isn't equipped to give birth to very many, I can certainly help be a mom to those who need me.  Biological children are not the only ones I can love and nurture.  Just because my child-bearing days are over does not mean my days of being a mom are!  Heck, even if I never fostered another child, I am going to have 3 beautiful, spunky, wild girls of my own to raise!  Having three little girls in less than three and half years is enough to keep me busy for many many years to come!  So really, I'm grateful for the perspective that dealing with infertility has given me.

So in the end, infertility has blessed my life.  Not in ways that I ever expected or really even wanted, but I can see some positive outcomes now.  Do I think infertility is awesome?  Ummm... no.  It's literally the hardest thing I've ever dealt with.  It sucks.  So bad.  But no trial is fun.  I truly believe that this trial has made me a better person.  I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father has helped me find the positive in the negative, to avoid becoming bitter, and has ultimately blessed me with the most incredible family in the world-- even if it's not the family I always imagined.  I saw a quote once that is basically my life motto now:

"My entire life can be described in one sentence:  It didn't go as planned, and that's okay!"

So, if you're dealing with infertility, hang in there.  I know how awful it is.  I know you might not want to hear it, but Heavenly Father really DOES know what's best and he has something amazing in store for you.  No on plans on being infertile.  Unfortunately it happens much more frequently than I ever knew.  Just hold on.  And if you need someone to talk to, pick me!  I get it.  I'll listen and not judge or give you unsolicited advice.  If you DO want some advice, here it is:  Read Alma 36:17-21.  ESPECIALLY verse 21.  You are going through something excruciating.  Because of the depth of your sorrow, you are going to be able to have such amazingly great joy!  Even if it feels like no one understands you, trust Christ.  He does.  He's been there, He's experienced your pain.  So turn to Him and know that even though it's not okay right now, one day it will be.