I'm Alive!

I had the goal to post more often, hopefully once a week. Fail. I also had the goal of taking more pictures during the day of my hilarious children since I'm home. Fail. Although, I'd been doing more and then the camera battery went dead and I couldn't find the charger. Upset. But, I just found it! So, the battery is now charging..JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS! Ok. Seriously. I was going to be SUPER bummed if I couldn't find it for Christmas...because Taylor is ALL about Christmas lately. I didn't think 2 year olds really had the concept of Santa...she' TOTALLY it. The best way to get her to behave lately is the tell her that Santa's going to put her on the naughty list. Works like a charm. So, I have a feeling that the pictures on Christmas this year are going to be full of a very happy, excited, hyper child. And my calm child.

Ok. Enough jibber jabber. I've got lots to catch up on, so lets back up to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was really a week-long event for us. Jared's birthmom, Laura, was in town (long story short, yes, Jared's adopted; he met his birthmom after his mission and we keep in contact with her. She lives in NY, but her mom and sisters live here in the Valley and we see them frequently...they are an AWESOME family!), so we made a point to see her and the whole Bressler clan. Laura hadn't met Abby yet, so we'd made a plan to all go out to lunch together and then to a park, but Taylor woke up that morning with a fever. Sad day. Fortunately, Laura decided to come over to see us rather than have me take Taylor out. She loves my girls :)

I'd say Taylor looks pained because she was feeling sick, but I don't know how true that'd be. We have a really difficult time getting her to look "normal" in pictures..she has a hilarious fake smile usually.

Arlene (Laura's mom) NEVER turns down an opportunity to hold Abby (and look at the face...how could you pass that up?).

Thanksgiving day was the day my camera battery died. This was the only picture I got of that day:

That's my mom holding Abby and my nephew Daniel...she's really good at multi-tasking :)

In other news, I've started working again...but this time from home! The office I worked at before I had Abby asked me to do Aging from home (calling on the old claims that insurance companies haven't paid and try to figure out why they didn't pay us and fix it). I get to work how ever many hours I want...it's a pretty sweet gig. And, I actually enjoy it. Working with insurance companies is a game...you've got to know all their tricks and try to beat them...I really like games :)

Welp, stay tuned for a Christmas post...there should be tons of pictures. It'll be epic:)

Coincidence?

As I was rocking my baby girl to sleep this morning, I was watching the Disney channel with Taylor. We were watching a clip that had a bunch of old Mickey Mouse characters, and I noticed some things that got me thinking...some of the characters were motherless. Take Goofy, for example. He has his son, Max, but there's never any mention of Max's mother...does he have one? I know Goofy has seemed to have an ongoing crush on Clarabelle the Cow, but I don't think she's Max's mom. And what about Hewey, Dewey, and Louie? They live with their Uncle Scrooge in DuckTales, but in the old clips, Donald is taking care of them. Are the orphans? Is Donald their dad? Then, THAT got me thinking to the Disney movies...there seems to be a large majority of them that have broken families or awkward family situations. In Snow White, it only talks about her stepmother, who's the evil queen. But what about her regular mother? And, to have a Stepmother, her father must've remarried...and that would've made him the King. Where was he when the Queen was trying to kill Snow White? Cinderella's parents die. Bambi's mom dies. Sleeping Beauty was estranged from her parents for 16 years (awkward). Wart from Sword in the Stone was an orphan. Mowgli from Jungle Book was an orphan. Ariel makes no mention of a mother. Belle doesn't have a mother. Simba's father died. Aladdin doesn't have parents. Do I really need to go on? Strange.
Also, have you noticed that a LARGE majority of Disney's villians are really skinny and angular? And that almost all of the antagonists die by falling far distances?

Sorry...this is all really random...but I guess you could blame it on watching kiddie shows all day combined with sleep deprivation :)

Who'da Thunk?

When Taylor was born, she was 6lbs 8 oz...which is pretty small, right? Well, she's always been steadily small. Never really had a growth spurt. Always in the lower percentiles for growth. I mean, take a look at this picture of her at about 2 weeks:

Look at how BAGGY that Newborn sized onesie is on her! And, she didn't outgrow the newborn sized clothing for at LEAST 3 or 4 months. No joke. So, after that, who'd a thought that I'd have a 5 week old who EASILY fits into 3 month outfits?:


She's not really a chunker, but I can't believe how fast she's growing! I figured between me being smallish as a kid (although I was a FAT baby) and Jared's Puerto Rican and Jewish heritage (both stereotypically small), we'd always just have small kids....but maybe not?

In other news, here is a hilarious video of Taylor watching Handy Manny (please disregard the fact that she's busy chewing her toenails):


Ok. This was like the 6th time she'd seen that clip! Everytime the skeleton moved and/or fell over, she'd crack up and ask us to rewind it so she could watch it again. Hear how cute her laugh is? At that point, it was a little fake, but isn't it such a cute sound?

In other news, about a year and a half ago, I agreed to read this before reading ANY other book by the request of Jared:
Jared LOVES this trilogy and has read it an unbelievably obscene amount of times. I knew it was something that was important to him, and I love to read, so I said I'd do it....I FINALLY finished it after a YEAR AND A HALF! Don't get me wrong; the were REALLY good! WAY better than the movies, and I LOVE the movies. But, it was really difficult for me to get past all the description (brilliant, but frequent), and I couldn't get into it enough to keep from reading it more than sporadically. But, IT'S FINISHED!! Now I can read other books...I have such a long "to read" list. I'm excited. However, I do have to say that I definitely don't regret reading LOTR...I just regret how long it took me to finish it (which is totally my fault.). Anyway, if anyone has any "Must read" recommendations, throw them my way please! I've already complete the Hunger Games trilogy (it took me a year and a half to read LOTR, but only 3 days to finish this trilogy...yipes!), currently reading The Help, and am trying to get my hands on a copy of The Book Thief...but feel free to suggest anything beyond that!

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Bliss

Since this girl was born:
, I have been given the amazing blessing of being able to quit my job. For any of you that have known me for any amount of time, you will know that being a stay-at-home mom has been a dream of mine since I was a child. I feel EXTREMELY blessed to be in a financial situation that finally allows me to fulfill this dream.

One of the BEST things about being with my girls all day is being able to see how Taylor is developing. Please don't mistake this as me taking Abby for granted, because I sure as heck ain't; it's just that, up until now, I've missed out a lot on Taylor's life because of the previous need for me to work. I'm just trying to soak her up now, make up for lost time.
So, Taylor is 2.5 years old. I've talked about how hilarious she is in the past, but MAN! I love how her imagination and personality is shaping! This is what I've learned from her in the past couple of days:


I look at this with my adult eyes and see a seemingly ordinary baby hanger. Useful? Yes. Unexciting? Yes. BUT. In the eyes of a 2.5 year old, this is really a MAGIC WAND.

To me, this represents a mess that I have to clean up (yes, we own the complete series of "That 70's Show")...a mess that is irritating because it's something Taylor NEVER should have been playing with...much less removing every DVD from it's box...BUT. To a 2.5 year old, this is a very cleverly made CASTLE. It was really difficult to stay made at her for more than a few seconds when her cute little voice declared that that's what it was...AND she did help pick it all up and put it away).
I LOVE this little girl

...unmatched clothes and unruly hair and all.

PS
she actually has a MUCH cuter smile than the one in the picture...that's just her "camera smile" :)

The Second Time Around...

DO you ever have a hard time with how to start a blog post? I know what I want to write, but there isn't a single intro that I can come up with that is pleasing to me. So, I'm just going to jump into content...sorry for the awkwardness!

Now that I'm the mom of 2 kids, I've been able to experience everything (pregnancy, delivery, nursing, etc) twice. And, can I just say that I'm so grateful for that? Past experiences can teach us so much if we let them! So, I'm going, for journaling purposes, record a bunch of comparisons.

For starters, I'm REALLY blessed to have both pregnancies be REALLY easy. With Taylor, I had minimal morning sickness...I did throw up a handful of times, but it was only when I got too hungry, or if I ate something too sweet when I was too hungry. With Abby, the only time I ever vomited was when I had the 24 hour stomach flu. HOwever, I did feel a lot more nauseous with her than I remember being with Taylor...not so bad that it kept me from activities , but enough to make me feel miserable while doing activities. Also, with both pregnancies, I neglected to take pregnancy pictures. I don't know what it is with me and photos...I just don't make them a priority! Here is pretty much the only photo I have of me being pregnant with Taylor (about a week before she was born)

and here's the ONLY one I have of being pregnant with Abby (right before leaving for the hospital):
You can't really tell from the photos, but with Abby, I was about 10 lbs heavier than with Taylor, and my tummy was quite a bit bigger....although I'm still pretty small by most standards.

For the sake of motivating me to blog more, and to prevent this post from becoming RIDICULOUSLY LONG, I've just made the executive decision to break this topic of baby comparisons into different posts...so next time I'll talk about how different my deliveries and hospital experiences were. I apologize if anyone thinks this is boring...but it's good for me to document...and I only have a handful of readers anyway...so sorry!

Baby Abby is HERE!!!

Entering the world on Sept 30th, 2011 at 8:35am in the morning:

is Abby Rose Payne (photo complements of Leigh over at lrootphotography). She weighed in at 7lbs 11 oz and 19.5 inches long. She has BLACK hair (and tons of it....and I mean TONS...it's ALL over her body!) and the sweetest little disposition!

THE STORY
Because of some structural issues my body has (I will never be able to deliver a baby vaginally), Abby was a planned c-section. Let me tell you how weird it is to know exactly when you are going to deliver the baby that you've been carrying around for 9 months....it's really strange and kind of anti-climatic. My surgery was scheduled for 9am at Banner Gateway, but I had to be there by 7am to get all the pre-op stuff done (blood work, a complete round of IV antibiotics to help prevent any infection). However, even though I wasn't supposed to be having the surgery until 9, some crazy stuff happened (something about the girl scheduled before me having her water break and they had to get her in earlier than scheduled), and I was being wheeled into post-op after surgery at the time my surgery was SUPPOSED to be. It was pretty awesome. And, while Dr. Beck was finishing closing me up, he was joking about how this was the first time in 25 years that he'd finished both scheduled c-sections before they were supposed to start and how he didn't know what he was going to do for the rest of the day.
Anyway, Abby right away showed a bit of her personality right away by pulling her hair and fidgeting...The first thing I heard, even before her cry, was Dr Beck saying "Wow...she's a feisty one"...and then "she's got big feet". It's awesome. Really though, she's been a pretty sweet baby! She sleeps really well and took to breast feeding RIGHT away! We did find out that she has a little heart murmur, but so far, it's been asymptomatic, and all of the dr's expect it to correct itself within next few months. Apparently, heart murmurs are EXTREMELY common, so I'm not really worried.

Sorry this isn't a very exciting or elaborate post. I don't really have an exciting birth story since it was a scheduled c-section (although, due to my last scar being more dramatic than Dr. Beck felt it should be, he did a little tummy tuck on me to get rid of that scar..BONUS!), and I don't think I'd know how to make the story sound exciting, even if it was exciting. But, I did want to record some memories and thoughts after an overload of photos :)

This was taken just minutes before leaving for the hospital...I'm 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant (and this is literally the only pic I have of me being pregnant..)




Abby is on the left, and her future husband, Simon Allen, is on the right (j/k). My good friend Rachel was still in the hospital after having Simon 2 days earlier, they paid Abby and I a visit shortly after I got to my room. I am SO happy that I got to see them and that they were coincidentally at the same hospital that we were. That was so fun!

Now for some thoughts:
I have always marveled at the creative powers of our Heavenly Father, but I can't get over how perfectly formed little babies are. Everything from their little perfect ears and perfect noses are just so awe-inspiring to me. I remember going to the zoo a few years ago and marveling at how amazing and beautiful all the animals are (and really, some of them are just WEIRD looking! You know that God has a sense of humor by how funny some of the animals are...how does one come up with the idea of a giraffe? Or how similar zebra and horses are, but zebras a super klutzy in comparison), and how much thought and time was put into the creation of each one. How much more time must He have spent on the creation of each one of us? Each and every person is distinctly different in looks, personality, and demeanor. It really blows my mind. But, looking at my tiny newborn baby just fills me with the feeling of love that I know my Heavenly Father has for each and every one of us! I am so grateful that He judged Jared and I fit to take care of not one, but two, of his choice spirit children. It's such a privilege, and I can only hope and pray to do a good enough job to make Him happy.