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.

It's September?!

Today is September 1. Holy Cow. Exactly 2 months ago at this time I was as big as a house and on my way to the doctors for my due date appoitment.. and now my little boy is almost 2 months old!


AND Clemson Football starts this weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope all my exclaimation points showed my true excitement! because I L-O-V-E CLEMSON FOOTBALL!!!!! everything about it: the orange, purple, and white, the tiger paw, the cadence count, tiger rag, the hill, the rock, tailgating, death valley.. ALL of it!
I took the above pic for a project my senior year.. love it too.

and since it is September 1 it is a lovely day because it is my sorority liTTle sister, Lydia 's BIRTHDAY today!!!!! so HAPPY BIRTHDAY LiTTle one I love you!

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.

Happy One Month!

Yesterday was Ethan's One Month Birthday!!! and today we had his one month check up at his doctor and he did so well! I think I was more upset about him getting his vaccination than he was!
We took pictures with Jackson and with Ethan's big lion stuffed animal so we can compare his size every month and see how he has grown!

So little baby boy.. What are you up to now that you are one whole month old!?

• You weigh 11 pounds and 7 ounces
• You are 23 and 1/4 inches long
• You wear size one diapers
• You wear size newborn but more and more of your 0-3 month outfits are starting to fit!
• You love your pacifier
• You also love your swing
• You love looking at yourself in the mirror on your swing, tummy time mat, and in the car
• You have crazy arms and legs and your grandpa says that because your exercising your little muscles so you can be an awesome athlete!
• He is probably right.. because you are SO strong! you hold your head up and sometimes you try to stand up on Mommy or Daddy when we are holding you!
• Mommy and Daddy have lots of nicknames for you including: Baby Boy, Stink-a-sorous, Curious Ethan, and Savage (daddy's favorite)
• You are starting to like bath time
• Everyone says you look just like Daddy!
• You have a lot of his mannerisms too -- like sneezing lots of times in a row and sleeping with your arms above your head.
• Dr. Sheth says you are very healthy and right on your developmental marks =)
  

Time is flying! When I was pregnant I never thought he would get here and now that he is here it is going soo fast. I'm loving every minute of it!

PISSED

Jillian should not have picked Ed. Over Reid AND Kiptyn.. seriously..

enjoy those short shorts and massive amounts of chest hair.. FOREVER!

and thats all that needs to be said about thats

Short Shorts

As a young child my dad taught me many things.. some of which include things like, "girls have long hair, boys have short hair" .. Included in this lesson for my children will be "girls wear short shorts, boys wear long shorts"

NO self respecting man should ever and i mean EVER wear these.. especially on national television!

MILLIONS of people now seen way more thigh of Ed than they ever need to see. I never did like him anyway and this just solidifies it for me and sweet tank top too while we are talking about this train wreck.

I liked Reid and I still like Kiptyn. Don't even get me started on Wes. But either way, Ed can go.. and apparently the chemistry wasn't there in the bedroom. If you are gonna marry someone you better make sure there is bedroom chemistry.. you are stuck with them forever..

not that any couples on these shows stay together anyway.. but a girl can dream.

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.