Back in the swing.. plus random thoughts

So we were on vacation for part of last week, the weekend and part of this week here..

Chincoteague Island, Virginia

Vacationing with a 2.5 month old about wore me and the hubby out.. but it was great to see the family and hang out with them. I have pretty much needed a vacation from vacation but we are getting back into the swing now.

We have a busy weekend ahead because one of Scott's best friends from childhood is getting married. Scott is one of the groomsmen so we will be attending the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner Friday as well as the wedding and reception on Saturday. Wedding season is almost over for us. I feel like we have been non stop at weddings since my best friend Amanda's in May of 2008. We don't have nearly as many on the agenda for 2010. Kinda happy kinda sad because I sure do love weddings.

We are switching from weddings to babies though (there have been a few along the way though.. including my favorite baby ever my Ethan!!) but one of my first friends in middle school Megan and her husband Aaron just had their baby Augie. And he is such a cutie!! I can't wait to catch up with her since we were pregnant for a lot of the time together.

We have more babies on the horizon because we will be welcoming 4 more before March. I can just not wait to meet Kylie Brianne (our first blood related niece!) As well as Jackson Colt, Landon William, and Blake Vincent!

As much as I love weddings I love babies even more and I can't wait to meet all these cuties and for Ethan to have even more playmates!

This post just went in a clearly different direction than I intended.. maybe I'm not back into the swing after all.. ha!

He went to Jared

True Life: My husband got my engagement ring at Jared "The Galleria of Jewelry.. so now when anyone asks me where it is from.. I get the oh so original comment "oooo He went to Jared."

Yes, yes he did.

WE also went to Jared to get our wedding bands

but I had to go to Jared last week because for some unknown reason Scott's ring was pretty much falling apart. NOT okay.. especially considering the amount of $$$ paid for it. His ring has 2 thin yellow gold bands on it and one of them was popping off. It obviously has nothing to do with how rough he is on it and the fact that he never takes it off (which I guess I should be happy about ha!)

Anyway, I had to get my inspections done on the diamonds in my rings anyway in order for our warranty and insurance to stay in effect for them. So I dropped all 3 off.. Scott told me not to cause a scene he knows me too well most likely because I was NOT going to pay for the repairs on his ring.

No argument or scene causing necessary.. When I went to get our rings back.. They did not ask me to pay 1 cent and our rings seriously looked BRAND NEW. Ah-mazing!

So I must say that I recommend Jared for any of your jewelery purchases.. especially any of you men out there that might be thinking about a special jewelry purchase for the lucky lady in your life. Mostly because in the last 2 years we have been to about 10 weddings.. and I wouldn't want that number to slack off in the next 2 years.

P.S. I did not get paid to write this they really do have beautiful jewelry and great customer service. But Jared people out there if you want to pay me to write some more nice things.. donations will be accepted.

Daggers

So my dear husband and I have a system when it comes to getting up with the baby at night.

Before 4am: Me
After 4am: Him

Now some might think this is unfair since I have way more hours to cover. However he works and I don't. So thats a fair trade off in my book. Plus if it is after 4 he can feed him, change him, and put him back to bed.. then shower and go to work.. which allows me to get a few more hours of sleep.

This morning:

5am- Ethan wakes up-- Scott gets up
5-5:45- Ethan randomly screaming bloody murder
5:45- Jen gets up to see if she can help
5:46- S: can I help you?
J: just wanted to see if I could help?
S: I dont need help he is fine
E: *deafening screaming*
J: did you change his diaper? (seems obvious but often that is last on my sweet husbands list)
S: I said I don't need help
5:47- J turns around and walks back to the bed and puts pillow over her head
6- J hears S put E in crib. and thinks. He must be back to sleep
6:01- J hears E on baby monitor crying.. and shower running
6:02- J gets up and gets baby E

Nope he didn't need help at all.

Cue texting:
J: what was the deal with your big attitude this morning?
S: I was defending myself from the daggers you were shooting through my head with your eyes and body language
J: I didnt know that was possible.. sometimes we all need a little help with the baby, dear
S: There were definetely daggers. PS can you make sure the dog has food?

He sure does know how to change the subject.

Men.

Burritos, Nipples, and Running

So yesterday I ventured out to get a few things.. cereal nipples for my little one and new running shoes were on the top of my list..

as was having lunch with my mom here:


But shhhh don't tell my loving husband because he gets mad everytime I eat there with out him..


Which brings me to my next point.. my little man (who is almost 2 months ahh!) eats like a horse/pig/gorilla.. any of the above work.. so his pediatrician has suggested we add rice cereal to his formula.. we tried this before and this results were not pretty. I will spare you the details. However we have since added a new bottle to our collection (mostly because Ethan is not at all picky when it comes to eating and because I liked them) BUT they don't make nipples for thicker liquids (such as rice cereal added to formula) so I bought fast flow ones and I am going to make the hole bigger myself.. please pray that this does not lead to me spilling formula all over my child or him turning into the fat kid at school in a few years


Wow my life is so exciting..


anyway.. If you have read this far you should also know that my doctor cleared me to return to normal activity after my horrible delivery c-section. So I decided it was time for me to shed the rest of this baby weight and the extra weight I had before getting pregnant and get back into my running routine. So I bought some new running shoes because my old ones don't fit quite right after having a baby.. people said my feet would grow at least 1/2 a size. They were wrong they are still the same size I just think they are a tad wider so my narrow nike shox were not working for me. Back in the day I didn't sweat when I spent over $100 dollars on running shoes.. however now with the 3 B's.. Bills, Baby, and Building a new house (not to be confused with the 5 B's of recruitment all my fellow sorostitutes -- Bibles, Boys, Booze, Bucks, Brands) I was on the search for yet another "B" a bargain..


3 stores later and just over $40 dollars later I came home with some black/pink/gray/white Sauconys. They are way comfy and equally as cute as my other much more expensive shoes.


How did my run go you ask?


I ran a mile. ONE mile. and I thought I was going to die. So did my running partner, my pup Jackson.

I'm a mom!

WOW that is weird to say. But I have to be honest-- it is the single most amazing job in the entire world and I wouldn't trade it for anything. All it took was Ethan to look up at me with his big blue eyes one time.. and I knew my life was changed forever. But in true Jen style we couldn't possibly bring a child into the world without some sort of commotion. So I give you my birth story:

Disclaimer: This is going to be long and probably confusing. But it was long and confusing. And stressful and scary among many other emotions.

Disclaimer 2: There will probably be some parts of this that are TMI.. but hey no one is forcing you to read it!

July 1, 2009: Due Date. I went to the doctor and I was about 2.5 cm, she stripped my membranes and told me there was no way that I would make it to my 41 week appt and she would probably see me the following day in Labor and Delviery (L&D) as she was on call. I was so excited that the end was in sight! I took a long walk with my mom and pup that afternoon and got excited to meet my baby boy. I was having contractions but I wasnt really timing them because I could tell they werent close enough together or intense enough to be the real deal.

July 2, 2009: Scott decided to stay home from work because I told him I wasn't feeling good.. I had had a headache since about 2am that was just not going away even with lots of tylenol. Around 10 my vision started to get blurry so I called my Dr and around 11am and she said head to L&D to get my blood pressure checked. So we went to Subway for lunch and headed that way.. I was not trying to eat nasty hospital food as my last meal before labor if they decided to keep me at the hospital. Walking out of Subway I was just not feeling good at all.. still contracting but again not regular and I mean they hurt but I could still talk through them. When we got to L&D and they asked if i was contracting and I said I was so they decided to hook me up to the monitors while they checked my blood pressure. I apparently have a high pain because my contractions were alot more intense and alot more regular than I thought. Oops. Anyway they checked my blood pressure which was a little high so they told me to wait and see what my doctor said. My doctor came in and checked me and I was 4cm! I was shocked. She told me that because of the headache and blurry vision and my contractions I could stay if I wanted and have the baby. She explained that I would need the help of pitcoin probably unless I wanted to change the name of Labor and Delivery to Labor All Day. haha. I was fine with the pitocin especially since I didnt even realize how strong my contractions were. I was bascially to excited for words that they were gonna let me stay and have my baby!! So I sent Scott to get my stuff and got comfortable. The doctor broke my water at around 3pm. I labored on my own (with the pitocin) until I was 7cm then I decided to go ahead and get the epidural because I was in pain now and the anesthesiologist was already there doing 2 other ones. This was around 10pm. The epi went way smoother than I expected. I was really nervous about it because needles and tubes in the spine are just not my thing.

Super long story cut short I basically just not progressing fast enough.. my water had been broken and I had been laboring for a while at this point. They were upping my dose of pitcoin but everytime they upped it Ethan's little heart would spike with one contraction and drop with the next and so on and so on. This caused my husband to park himself in front of the heartrate monitor and study it. Everytime his heart rate dropped below 100 (read: every few minutes when I had a contraction) and alarm would go off. There were so many other people in labor though that no one would come turn it off. So that became Scott's job because I could not take the crazy beeping in my ear. So he would watch for the heart rate to go back up and turn it off. And on top of it all my nurse told me I wasn't making fast enough progress. They thought he was laying on the cord and that when I would have a contraction since my uterus got smaller his heart rate would jump either up or down. So they turned off the pitocin and pumped me back up with fluids and did an internal montior on his heart rate through his little scalp and my contractions on my uterus.. At this point I had so many tubes coming out of me. I had mulpitle IV bags.. multiple tubes coming out of the bird and an oxygen mask on to try to get more oxygen to Ethan (This was at about 2am) Basically my doctor and the nurses were trying to just get him past this crazy heart rate business and me over the 7cm hump so I could make some progress quick and get him out. Well after the doctor got me all hooked up to these crazy tubes and upped the pitocin again his heart rate suddenly dropped to the 40s. And the alarm went extra crazy this time and I thought we were under nuclear attack. I was so worried/scared/nervous. All I remember is the words C SECTION STAT come out of my doctors mouth and it then looked like an episode of Grey's Anatomy with doctors and nurses running and coming out of the wood work.

His heart rate came back up (thank god) before I even got to the OR but they weren't taking any chances at that point.. and I was so scared and everything was happeneing so fast I didn't know what to do but lay there and take it. They hurried my mom and MIL out of the room and got DH all scrubbed up. They were hooking me up to stuff and unhooking me up from stuff. They wheeled me away within 5 minutes of the doctor saying C Section. And it was just a crazy whirl wind after that -- all I can say is it happened FAST. The c-section hurt.. hurt ALOT. When they say pressure and tugging that is the understatement of the century. And I got the shakes from them upping my epidural. Shaking uncontrollablly is just no good for business.

I guess I just had NO IDEA what to expect with regards to the c section because no one had ever even mentioned to me the possiblity of having one (all I heard was the chance was so low because I had such a healthy pregnancy and I was so young and healthy) I was just and trying to keep myself together. In every book I read I skipped all the C-Section parts. Scott was great in the OR trying to keep my calm or I would have gone absolutely crazy. He told me how great I was doing. All in all it was the quickest and scariest process ever. One second I was laying there watching his heart rate monitor and the next I was getting cut open.

BUT...

Ethan Scott Tennyson made his arrival on July 3, 2009 at 3:21am He was 9 lbs 0oz and 22 inches long. I got to see him for about 15 seconds and they told me he was healthy wisked him away to the nursery. Scott did get to cut the cord though and he stayed with me while they got me closed up and then went to see him at the nursery. I had to go to the recovery room for an hour by myself where I got really naseous and threw up. Which is easier said than done when you cant even barely lift your head from all the drugs they had given me. But I figure I got sick probably because I was worried sick about my baby boy. Turns out he was healthy as can be.

I finally got to my post partum room at about 5am and Scott was allowed back and they brought me my baby. He was so perfect!

We spent the next 2 days in the hospital having visitors and snuggling! I am more in love with him than I ever thought I would be. We got to come home Sunday July 5 in the afternoon and I have been in ALOT of pain. But it is worth it to have him here and healthy.

Train wreck

So last night I went to the Taylor Swift (love her!!) concert with some peoples.

First of all way too many people told me I looked like I was going to pop.. thanks people.. im 9 months pregnant.. what do you expect? One lady went so far as to tell me she is NOT delivering my baby here at this concert.. lady.. news flash.. i didnt ask you to nor do I want you to..

Second of all.. there were way too many 11-13 year old girls wearing shorts like these:

Praise the Lord that I am having a boy.. but lets be serious if I ever have a girl there is no way they go out of the house looking like a fashion disaster. Or that their daddy lets them go out of the house with cheek showing.

On a nicer note Taylor Swift puts on a majorly good show! She sounds so good live! despite it being a muddy mess it was still a lot of fun!!

True Life: My husband bets on Nerds

No friends that is not a typo.

My husband in all his glory had friends over to place bets on the National Spelling Bee. You had to pay $10 per nerd and he even printed out their biographies for everyone to make the most informed decision possible.

Now, it doesnt sound that bad in theory.. in fact I would say it was even fun. However, my nerd went out very early! and he was apparently one of the favorites to win!! (yes, I am bitter)

It got bad when everyone started trash talking each others nerds. (Since mine went out so early I obvi didnt participate). How exactly does one trash talk spelling bee contestants you ask?

Let's just say it all began with "Your nerd can't even spell nerd". and concluded with a complete analyzation of non verbal behavior. "Did you see the look on her face?! she totally knows that sh!t"

Ridiculous? Yes. Fun? I am almost ashamed to admit that it was.

The wife of the year award goes to..

ME!

I skipped my 2nd child birth class yesterday evening in order to let my husband watch his Capitals win the their first series in the NHL playoffs. (and have friends over to enjoy some adult beverages while watching).

Childbirth class scared me enough the first time. and the topics for yesterday didn't look all that interesting. We will NOT be skipping anymore.. esp. since the next (and last) 2 classes include the hospital tour and pain management.

and i need my pain management starting now.. thanks.