an update long overdue. 10.25.19

what's going on with us?
welp. how much time do you have....?

i haven't even updated since we moved to north carolina!

after a year of working on fornite for epic in utah, bradley was reassigned to a different epic project which required him to relocate to HQ in raleigh. so we packed up and shipped out to north carolina in june. even though there were whisperings of other opportunities out west coming into the works soon, we felt strongly that raleigh was the right destination for us.
we had a fun road trip down, followed by a whirlwind week of unpacking, followed by the best family reunion EVER with my family in charleston, followed by starting up school immediately, due to year round school! bea has the best first grade teacher in the history of the universe and we love her school. leaving miss jen behind for oliver was one of the saddest farewells from utah we had, but we found a great preschool for him as well. it's not miss jen, but it's a close second.

i love it here. i have everything i could ever want. we ended up snagging our dreamy little house. i live among tall, beautiful, thick, deciduous trees, we are in a supportive ward with fast friends, bea has a perfect school, ollie loves his preschool, bea is in a great dance program, our neighborhood is an amazing community (with a great pool ;) ), it seems like every day there is a new lake to go hiking by, the weather is amazing and it doesn't get too cold, but we have enough chill to change the leaves, everything here is affordable, we're close to the beach. and to top it all off, within a month of moving here, brad got an ENORMOUS  raise. i have it all.
except one thing.
a happy husband.
it's no secret that epic had become more and more dysfunctional the more popular their games became, and it reflected in the workload and harmful work culture. they began to develop a terrible reputation, and with good reason. soon, crunch went from once a month to every single day. hours were extended to late hours of the night. more work was being demanded with no new man-power to back it up. everyone was (and still is) exhausted, cranky, and overwhelmed.
what we thought would be a good change with getting closer to HQ ended up being a disaster. brad was more unhappy than he's ever been at any workplace before. he came home wanting to quit every. single. day.
meanwhile, 2 companies (one in the bay area, one in seattle) had been asking him to come work for them.
it infuriated me. at first i wouldn't even entertain the idea.
we JUST got here! i had everything i wanted! we just got a huge raise! isn't that enough to keep us happy?! surely he could hold out a LITTLE longer to see if it gets better?
he did, and it didn't. it got worse and worse every day. the little time brad did get with me and the kids after his late hours he spent exhausted and irritable. he worked all weekend long. he woke up at 6 am to manage things at work and was at work until late into the night. he would come home and then work at home. and with no reward. no positivity at the office, low morale no matter how much was getting done, all while feeling like nothing was getting done at all.
i finally started warming up to other ideas and entertaining offers elsewhere. i couldn't live like this anymore. even though we had everything we thought we wanted, no one was happy.

i was so frustrated and wondered if this whole thing had been one big stupid mistake. i felt foolish. i  couldn't figure out what i was doing here. i felt so so so strongly that we should come here, but now it looked like there was no way we could stay and keep our family functional. i thought to myself "why in the world would god give me this amazing setup and then almost instantly snatch it away???" it felt cruel. i felt stuck. but then i had an epiphany one day, and it changed everything. i felt stupid for not realizing it earlier.
you can have a perfect life on paper, but if your family members are miserable, everything is miserable, no matter how perfect your life may seem. but i still wondered, why did i get such a strong prompting to come here? how could that possibly have been right?
i shared my struggles with my sisters and shannon sent me a story from the new era magazine (linked here). it is basically a story about a father and a son who are heading home from a fishing trip at dusk. they come to a fork in the road they didn't remember, even thought they thought they knew the way home. they said a prayer really quick to find out which way to go. they both felt a strong prompting: "go to the left". so they went to the left. it was a dead end. they turned around and took the other path, leading them back to the familiar road home.
they asked each other, "why were we both prompted to go to the left, even though it was the wrong way?"
the answer became clear. they had to be absolutely sure that they were going the right way, before it got too dark, and they got lost completely. it took finding the dead end path first to be certain the other way was the right way.
what a perfect lesson! it illustrated EXACTLY how i was feeling!
brad and i both agreed, had we entertained the other opportunities first instead of giving epic HQ a fair shake, we would always have wondered if we should have just stayed with epic. we would get to the expensive west coast wondering if we would have just been happier back in the easy, affordable south.
spoiler alert: we aren't.

SO. it is without further ado that i announce our next and imminent move to seattle, WA!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhhh what even is this life?! brad got a very attractive and enthusiastic offer to work at wizards of the coast in seattle this week and put in his notice at epic on tuesday. if you are unfamiliar with that company, buckle up for the nerdiness because they are the fellas that brought you Magic cards annnnnnd dungeons and dragons! (among other things lol). it's not fortnite but for that we are eternally grateful. we have learned that fortnite is not a nice place to be. (for more info on that i highly recommend checking out Hasan Minaj's netflix patriot act episode about the video game industry. it is insanely accurate and eye opening).

is it going to be hard to leave this all behind? absolutely. am i worried about moving our family and disrupting the kids? obviously of course. but honestly, as brad's interview process moved further and further and epic for him got worse and worse, the idea of leaving got more and more bearable each day. at this point i can honestly say i am excited to start over somewhere new and get bradley back to good health. he has been put through the wringer. we have been pumping positivity about this situation to the kids for a month now and i think even they are getting amped for it.

we're adding another state to our list, and i can't lie, i am EXCITED.

on friendship

i've had some thoughts on friendship lately that i feel like i've needed to share.
lately, i feel like i don't really know enough about my friends' lives. i know some really, really great people, and i love them all dearly, whether i just talked to them yesterday, or have only been able to "like" their facebook and instagram photos on the daily. a lot of the time these days, i feel like i haven't been great at keeping on top of my friendships. i feel like the older we get, the farther apart we live, and the more that's happening in our lives, the more we realize that friendships require maintenance. i'm realizing as i get older how important it is to foster friendships. often, good friendships are what get me through the day, and i feel like i'm not on top of it like i should be.

i've thought about why and how i've gotten to this point and i think i know why, but i'm not sure how great of an excuse it is. since bea was born, i have had a lot of struggles. i had some really crippling PPD after her, and just as i was coming out of it, we were inspired to bring oliver into our family and it started all over again. for the past 4 years, as hard as it's been, i've really had to "just do me" for a while to just get by in life. i had a hard enough time taking care of myself and my family, it seemed just too overwhelming to try and manage everything else. i wanted to be a part of my friends' lives and put in the work to maintain my friendships, but i couldn't get there. i couldn't make it. i couldn't handle long phone calls since i was constantly on the brink of tears, i didn't have the energy for sending out christmas cards and birth announcements, and responding to the ones i received. and now that i'm finally coming out the funk after oliver, i'm realizing how much i've missed of my friends' lives. and now i feel like i've been out of it for so many years, it's hard to play "catch-up", i feel like people may feel that it's too little, too late.

i guess i just want the people i love (which is so, so many of you) to know how much i love you, even though i've been a crappy friend for a long time. i'm ready to work on it now. i don't know if i fully know where to start, and maybe that's why i'm writing this out, but i'm ready to finally be a good friend again now. i won't screen your calls, and i'll try my hardest to get that christmas card out! even if it ends up happening in march. i've been doing the best i can to manage my life and now i feel like i can manage my friendships too. i love you! don't be a stranger!<3 p="">

2 broken funny bones is not very funny.

you guys. i'd be lying if i told you my life was smooth sailing right now.

i'm trying really hard not to be a downer but life has been really tough this summer.

in the middle of spring we were blessed to buy a home that we really love, and love more each day (even though it realllllly needs to be painted), in a location that makes me say "I LOVE WHERE I LIVE!" at least once a day.

then, the day after we moved in, brad broke his arm. it was really tough for all of us. it threw the kids off, pained brad quite a bit, and heaped a ton more responsibility on me. it really stressed us all out. brad couldn't hold the baby for six weeks, he had trouble typing at work and was frustrated a lot from having to do things slowly and not being able to help much around the house. there was just this dark cloud hanging over us from all the looming stress. sometimes we were able to forget about it but we were just exhausted and spent. luckily the break was mild, and after six weeks he was back to normal, starting physical therapy, and finally able to help out around the house more. it was great. we were finally going to get our summer back!

enter break two. two weeks later he took a bad tumble down the stairs and shattered the same arm into 3 pieces. it was bad. really bad. for 2 weeks i felt like i was in a bad dream, just waiting to wake up. luckily the angles at which it broke were in a promising direction which avoided surgery, so they were able to set it and put it into a brace and sling. this time, his pain was immense, his arm and hand swelled up to twice their normal size, he was constantly on pain killers, could hardly type at all, can still hardly stay awake even after three weeks (like it's to a point where it's almost dangerous for him to drive, because he'll fall asleep), and needs some help getting dressed, tying shoes, carrying things, etc. for the first two weeks i had to completely dress and undress him and clean his brace, and dry it after he showered with a blowdryer. it is all of the complications of before, only amplified exponentially. oh, and i am constantly running after 2 very active children, who have become very needy and cranky from all of the shift in routine and normality this summer.

it's just a lot. he has to be in the sling for 6 weeks and be in the brace for 12 weeks. he'll be busted up until november. and then he'll have MAJOR physical therapy to do from having an immobilized arm for 20 weeks. we're not even sure he'll get full mobility back.
also looming is the possibility of a deeper issue with his bones. it is very unusual that a healthy 30 year old man would get a break this bad from a simply tumble down the stairs. normal for an elderly woman, but very strange for a guy like brad. he is getting a bone density scan in a couple weeks to try and find the root of the problem. 2 breaks in 8 weeks in an otherwise healthy person is very odd.

you guys, i am exhausted. everything is twice as hard and twice more work, and we're not even halfway done. brad can surprisingly help me out with unloading and loading the dishwasher one handed, for which i am eternally grateful, and he can keep an eye on bea if she is watching a movie or playing legos or something, but that is about where it stops. i didn't even realize all the chores he used to do for me until the garbage kept filling up ALL THE TIME (seriously we take it out like almost twice a day!) and all the clean laundry started piling up (he is the main clothes-folder at our house). i've had to take oliver's early morning feedings and changings since the first arm-break, which is tough since the PPD medicine i take at bedtime is very sedating and keeps me asleep for a long time in the morning. brad used to do the morning shift with the kids and now i need to do it. i can't leave him home alone with the kids because he can't lift oliver, so i have to take them everywhere i go. also, i do bedtime now with half the help. he can supervise bea, but only if she is cooperative. if she decides she doesn't want to get dressed herself and has a tantrum (and there are so. so. many of those), i have to step in and do it. oliver is out of the question for him since i need to change a diaper and put his jammies on.

we've had to put off home improvement and decorating projects we planned on doing once we moved in; we can't set up our new garage door openers because i can't reach the top of the opening mechanism. we had to call for help to change our smoke detectors because i can't reach them. we can't hang our art, because i can't do it by myself. we can't configure a lot of our media because i don't know how and he can't reach around to do it. there's so many little things that either have been put on the hold or just have become a huge production because neither of us can do them.

also, i just got called to teach the 5 year olds in church. brad can't take the baby so i have to take him while i teach. he is always either screaming in my arms to get down, or running out the classroom door, which i have to keep open because my partner NEVER COMES (even though she is at church). this is after i've already dealt with a sacrament meeting where my children are so unruly and misbehaved that i just want to cry, pack up, and leave, and then holding a tired, hungry,  fussy, wiggly oliver all through sharing time. the class-teaching is just the cherry on top. we still don't know many people in our ward so i don't know anyone i could ask to hold him for me during primary yet.

oh yeah and we had to cancel our disney trip that bea was looking forward to SO MUCH. we were supposed to be leaving tomorrow. she will ask every so often, "hey mom when are we going to disneyland?" and it makes me want to cry.

brad also had to sit out his company trip to seven peaks tonight (where they rent out the whole place for the night for just us).

bea also just got pink eye today. so there's that. just another cherry on top.

our summer is just slipping away from us. it's the summer of the broken arms.

i'm sure from the outside, it doesn't sound like that much, and i know single moms have it so much worse, and i shouldn't be negative about it, and i try so hard not to be. i know it could be worse. he could have broken his back or neck or legs, we could have had bad insurance that made us pay for all of it (we have paid nothing for any of this, nor the physical therapy), he could have broken his hand or wrist and not have been able to work at all, he could have died (...? from a fall down the stairs..? i dunno i guess stranger things have happened), i could live far from my family and not have their help (and holy cow they have helped); there are really a lot of ways this could be worse. but the situation is what it is, and it is really unpleasant. and at the end of the day when i am so exhausted and stressed from just our day to day life with all these trials, i am frankly too tired to count my blessings.

i've been wanting to write about this for a while but i'm not sure why. i don't feel like i really have anything positive to offer about it yet.

i'm still trying to work out what i'm supposed to learning from all of this. i'm not typically an "everything happens for a reason" person, but i do believe there is something important to be learned from every situation. i'm just not sure i'm finding it here yet. maybe it really is a situation for me to learn to be more positive. i'm so overwhelmed with everything right now i'm finding it so hard to stay positive. i have been breaking down into tears more often than i care to admit. some days i just want to pack everyone up and move to my mom's for the next 12 weeks. brad and i are both run ragged, and often cranky; our kids are at ages where bea is always pushing our limits (or pushing her brother) and oliver is so busy, and always on the brink of getting himself killed. staying positive requires energy that i'm just not sure i have. i am surviving on diet coke and prayers.

maybe i feel like sharing this because i really am open to suggestions. maybe this is supposed to teach me to humble myself and ask for help; something i am not very comfortable doing. so really, what would you do in this type of situation?? more often than not i just feel like shutting down, curling into fetal position, and just quitting. how would you try to stay more positive? how would you keep your head above water amidst all the chaos? how would you try to stay patient with your kids, yourself, and your husband? how would you keep from being angry? how would you keep from crying? how would you keep from feeling sorry for yourself? how would you stay sane?
i have all of these questions and more. i am ready for help. i am ready to start trying to gird up and look on the bright side. help a sister out.



PS! if you opened this to figure out how brad broke his arm both times, here ya go:

1. fell out of a dumpster while trying to push down packing paper with his feet. the dumpster had wheels, and he used a wheeled cooler as his stepping stool. not his brightest moment. the fracture was minor and we basically all laughed about it.
2. fell down the stairs. he was in so much pain he was in tears, and he does not cry. his humerus is in three pieces. i kept it together at the hospital, but that night in bed i cried myself to sleep. in the morning i woke up thinking i'd just had a bad dream.

a bit about my babies 7.6.16

i feel like it's time again! time for some updates about the kiddos.

bea
- bea can't stop dancing. she literally dances everywhere she goes. i was walking behind her at the children's museum today and her arms were out like in second position and her hands were doing that twirly thing. her favorite style is contemporary (which she learned about from SYTYCD the next generation, which she LOVES) and choreographs dances to songs on the daily. it is cute to see her so passionate about something.

-she has a playlist that she loves to listen to. it consists of every song she hears that she likes and then says "mom add this to my exciting songs" or "add this to my playlist". it's so cute. she sounds so grown up when she talks about her playlist. she dances to a lot of these songs on the regular.

-her favorite toys right now are her prized dress ups. when she wakes up in the morning, she goes potty, and then retreats to her room to play with her dress ups for a half hour or so. she changes into one outfit, comes into my room, does a pose, dances a little jig, waits for my approval, and then goes back into her room to try another one on. it is so cute.

-she really likes to tell me to "give it a shot". if i tell her someplace is really crowded she just goes "mom let's just give it a shot. do your best and just give it a shot."

-bea is on a soccer team right now and loves it but mostly just because she gets to run around with her friends. dance is still her one true love. and yes, she does dance on the soccer field.

-whenever i am grumpy she asks where my smile is.

-she loves oliver and whenever he cries in the car she tries to make him laugh, and usually succeeds. he laughs to keep from weeping.

-she has her first acting job on friday! (if you don't count house hunters) i think she'll do a great job, she did great for house hunters (which has a lot of acting in it believe it or not), the director loved her so i'm hoping she brings it for her job on friday. we are very excited.

-she loves duplos. she will sit and play with duplos for HOURS. she is also this way with vintage polly pockets.

-her favorite movie right now is the lego movie. she likes to pretend to be wild style. her favorite movie before that was charlotte's web, preceded by the ever popular nemo. it makes me sad that she's moved on from the more tender movies but i'm sure it's on to the next sometime soon so maybe there's a tender one next. i was so excited for her to see finding dory since finding nemo was her favorite movie for 2 solid years but she didn't glom onto it like i'd expected and it just kinda wilted me a little.

-she starts preschool in august. she loves to work in her workbook at home to get ready for it. she is getting better at tracing letters and likes to draw people, which are basically potatoes with stick limbs and googly eyes.

-she's got a thing for carnivals and carnie rides. she calls them "fun fairs" or "ferrises" or something along those lines. it's really funny to hear her talk about carnival rides.


oliver

-HE WALKS! he has been taking steps here or there for couple weeks but the past few days, he has really started to walk A LOT. it is SO CUTE. he really likes it too, he just lights up when he is walking and gets so excited.

-he is just a giggly giggly dude. and he crumbles into a ball when he laughs, like an armadillo. i LOVE it!

-he has started hitting bea when he knows he shouldn't. it begins.

-he has 7 teeth and is growing two more!

-he is also totally in on the duplo game

-he is such a snuggle bug lately!!! i can't get enough of his snuggles. it's so nice because bea never was a snuggler and he wasn't super snuggly as an infant, so he is definitely making up for lost time. my favorite is when he does his armadillo roll right into my neck. i live for those moments!

-he can kind of say some words, he mostly just makes sounds but i know what they mean. he says mama for me but he also says it to mean "more". he says it a lot while eating popcorn.

-he can actually eat a fruit pouch on his own without making a mess when he is really hungry. he takes hunger very seriously and will not let a drop of food go to waste if he can help it.

- i tell everyone oliver has 2 speeds: happy and hungry. he is always happy unless he is hungry and then he just screams. and screams. and screams. that's what happened when he first left the womb actually. he's been hungry since day one. so i basically have to be giving him food like 60% of the time, but it's all good, he's cute so i'll do it.

-he is not feeling like learning sign language. not his thing.

-he is a pretty social baby and is very interested in other babies and what they are doing

-he leaped out of my arms the other day while we were sitting on the steps at the pool (scariest moment ever) and ever since then he HATES baths, which is really sad because he used to love them. i hope he gets over it soon because it's kind of breaking my heart.

-he is wearing 18-24 month clothes but his growth is slowing down and he is leaning out.

-he has really adorable curls that i really don't want to cut, but people keep mistaking him for a girl so i don't know, maybe i should get it cut. i don't know.



that's all i got for now. i'm sure i'll remember something in like an hour and have to add it. i love these babies!!!!!!

planting roots, ya'll

i know this is crazy town, since in the last 3 years we have lived in 3 different places, but it's looking like we will be here for a while. which is great because we are very happy here. even though i still get a pit in my stomach every time my friends back east instagram NYC photos, or pictures in the woods, it's been surprisingly nice to live here. obviously the best thing is being close to our families, that is YUUUGGGEEEE (#dumptrump), and brad's amazing job is definitely another bonus.
sooo since we'll be here for a while, we've decided it's high time we buy a home.
which is cray cray. i can't even decide on a t shirt to buy, how does the universe expect me to be qualified to buy a house..?! but here we are.
we've spent the past while renting a single family home. it's a split level, which is pretty annoying, but it's got the right amount of space, even a little too much, given our history with small spaces, and it's in an amazing location. it also has a cute little backyard, but a huge front yard where the grass can never seem to stay alive.
if it's taught us anything, it's that we just aren't cut out for single family home living. we don't love it. i always used to say in our hip soNo apartment (south norwalk guys. google it, it's the perfect town), that i never wanted anything bigger than an 1150 sq foot 2 bedroom apartment, and that i could last in that apartment til my dying days. and everyone told me i was crazy, so i drank the koolaid and went for a real live 4 bedroom house once we got here. and guys, i'm just not about that life.
we're buying a townhome, which i feel like needs some explaining, because a lot of people are left super puzzled when they see we're making the switch from single family to townhome.
so here's the explanation. (with alliterated topics. you're welcome.)

style
most of the city of sandy (with the exception of more expensive custom homes) was built between the 60s and early 90s. with our budget there were a handful of styles available. the 60s homes sounded promising with the mystique of mid-mod style, but those are nowhere to be found. instead, all of the 60s homes around here are just little square rectangles with no intrigue. they are actually pretty ugly and most of them have *CARPORTS* #gasp. and most of them are in not so great neighborhoods, so no, those were out. and then the 70s homes are literally ALL bi-levels. all of them. split level after split level after split level. you can update those all you want but at the end of the day, they are still split levels. no thanks. and then in the 80s and 90s, they got a little more creative and brought in the tri-level (formal living room up front, kitchen behind, step down to a family room off the kitchen, 3 bedrooms upstairs, maybe another in the basement. they are literally all the same.) so we didn't like those either. after that, there were literally no other options. we didn't want a split/multi level. but that's literally all there is here. i know a townhome seems like it would be even more cookie cutter, but since they are newer (ours is from 2010), they have more open floor plans that are much more functional and organic than those other styles.

surroundings
in our old apartment, we had people living above us and on either side of our apartment. we never heard our neighbors to the left. our neighbors to the right, next to our bedroom, had a shouting match like once a week. above us, they had parties until 2 am and their guests all wore heels, and we heard the plumbing every time they flushed the toilet or used their washer and dryer. and you know what, yall? i loved it. i love being surrounded by people. i like to know that if i died, someone would smell it and call the cops. i love that if our power went out, we had neighbors a door away to commiserate with us. i loved seeing the same people in the hallways every day (or in our new case, on the sidewalk), having them smile at my kids, and not even know their names but know we had each other's backs. i love having the insulation of other people's lives around me, to help me feel less alone. i love hearing a bump in the night and just knowing it's the neighbors and not a murderer in my basement (because obviously that's always what it is when you live alone in a house). i know it's not for everyone, but i'm not everyone. i'm me. the first night i spent here in our stand-alone house, i cried. i hated the quiet and i felt so alone.

size
technically the new house is larger than our house now, but it feels a bit cozier. it has a smaller living room at the expense of bigger bedrooms and an unfinished basement (that we intend to personalize later), and currently only has one living area, since the basement isn't done. but i am looking forward to the change. in our old apartment, bea would never play with her toys unless they were in the same room as me. we loved playing with her toys in her bedroom,  and we had her play kitchen in the living area, and she loved to be by me while she played with it. we have a playroom here and we never use it because bea doesn't like to go down there alone. it doesn't even have that many toys in it either. i know that once we consolidate our space, the kids and i will have more time in the same place, which will make us all happier. and their toys will fit in their larger bedrooms, so if friends come over, they will still have a place to play. i don't like to accumulate stuff. i hate stuff. having a smaller living space, we won't be tempted to fill space with STUFF.
oh and we'll finally have a proper master bath suite with garden tub, glass shower, walk in closet and large vanity. so nice.
side note: we have a large yard here in our split level. the front yard is huge and the backyard is medium/smallish. it costs a fortune to water (read: $350 a month; yet still somehow always looks dead) and takes a lot of landscaping upkeep with weeding and stuff. that's just not our jam. i don't want to spend my money on sprinklers and my saturdays on yard work. the new house has a bit of a small backyard that's fenced off, with a fence that opens up to a large community green space and a playground which is close enough that we can walk to it in 30 seconds, but far enough away that we won't hear anyone on it from our house. it's really the best setup. we'll basically have an enormous backyard with our own playground and zero upkeep.

spot
the spot the new house we're in is REALLY close to where we are now. i call this area the "corridor of convenience". it is a quiet residential area nestled between the two main roads of the area with literally every single thing you could possibly need, all 5 minutes away. 3 grocery stores, costco, car washes, restaurants, dry cleaners, sporting goods store (with a ferris wheel inside!), the aquarium, craft stores, home depot, best buy, ikea, movie megaplex, clothes shopping (carters for the kids, nordstrom rack for mom), swig (my new addiction, dirty diet cokes and cookie drive through?! sign me up!) PLUS 9 min from brad's work, 9 min from target,  15 min from children's museum, 15 min from farm/nature center. it seriously does not get any better, not anywhere else in the country even. we have it so good.

savings
even though single family homes and townhomes in this location are roughly the same price, our utilities are about to go down, drastically. our HOA fee will cover half of the utilities we pay now, at a lower price, and our electric and gas bills will go down, since being insulated by other homes on either side of us will keep us warmer in winter, and cooler in summer.

so there's our reasoning. after spending more and more time in the house we're in, the more we realized that we just wanted a different lifestyle. i know it doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it makes sense for us and that's all that matters!! and now, after 5 reschedulings of our closing date (I AM SO OVER THE RESCHEDULING!!!!) i'm really excited to get into the new house!!! we just need to paint it and change the carpet. yellow paint plus chocolate carpet looks like you're living in a rotting banana. not cute. if you feel like helping a sister paint.....feel free to come over...! :D

also....keep an eye out for us on house hunters on HGTV!! we got accepted and are so excited!!!!

Seventeen Again

ok ya'll. cat's out of the bag. i got braces. again. for the third time.
and please don't give me that "oh she should have worn her retainers" look! ya'll I DID wear my retainers!!! all three times i've had to get braces have been from situations beyond my control. first time, i got them too young and my jaw grew after i got them off so i had to get them again. only 2% of people's jaws grow after they turn 12 and i'm one of the lucky winners. and the second time, she put a PERMANENT retainer on my bottom teeth, and it separated somehow and so my teeth got very pushed forward because my tongue pushes against my teeth at night while i sleep because my tongue is too big for my tiny mouth.

so now, we're on round three and i'm hoping third time's a charm. it's been a really humbling experience for me to swallow my pride and get braces that are kind of ridiculous looking as an adult but it had to be done. my teeth didn't touch down in the front so i couldn't eat sandwiches or noodles or anything that requires your front teeth biting down on something. it's become really embarrassing for me to eat anything really in a public setting. braces are the answer. now that most of the pain (physical and emotional) has mostly subsided i have the courage to write about it and even post some pictures to just throw it all out there and own the braces.
someone told me  "well at least you're not an awkward teen this time!" but the sad truth is, my PPD meds give me horrible skin issues, so my skin is breaking out, i have braces (with a REALLY attractive rubber band across the top and bottom!!!), and the post partum hormones have made my hair uncontrollably frizzy. so basically, i'm reliving my teenage years. hoorah.

so hot right now. bradley is so lucky.

but i'm trying to remain positive. so here are a few good things about the braces:
1. i will finally be able to eat a burger in public without looking like a complete idiot. (picture me taking a bite and everything just sliding right back out and me having to rip the lettuce and tomato out of my mouth to get it out of the burger. it's awful you guys, really).
2. our amazing insurance covered almost the entire thing i only paid 300 dollars out of pocket from a 5300 bill. #blessed
3. my dad jump started a company several years back that invented an orthodontic technology that halfs the time braces need to be worn by sending sonic waves through your teeth to make them move faster and to alleviate pain. it costs 900 dollars but i was able to get it for free from the CEO of the company. instead of having to wear the braces for 18 months, i only have to wear them for 10.
4. at least i'm getting them while my kids are young and not when i'm 40 and at PTA meetings.
5. it actually feels really good to do something for myself. they hurt SO bad and bea and oliver always find a way to kick me in the face when they hurt the most but even when i put the humiliating elastic across my teeth, it feels good to know that i'm doing something to take care of myself.
so things are gonna be a-ok, guys.

oh in other news, i ate it really hard on the ski slopes in friday night, night-skiing and like almost died. i shot like 20 feet (no exaggeration) into the air and landed on my back and rolled about 100 yards. i seriously tumbled down the mountain thinking "welp. this is how i die." my dad was terrified and peter was a bit shocked, but i somehow made it out alive and finished the run on adrenaline but pretty much had PTSD by the next run so i sat out the rest of the night. it was pretty scary. so i sat by the fire and listened to "hamilton" for a while and now i'm going to be that friend that tries to make everyone listen to hamilton because it's pretty amazing.

this is on my back. there's another one about 6 inches above it. they are both about the size of my hand. #pain

also, my kids are pretty awesome right now. bea says the funniest things these days and i try to get the best ones written down on facebook but it's really hard to keep track of them all because she spits em out so quickly and so frequently that i forget the last one the second she cracks a new one. she loves to tell us that we are cracking her up and whenever she wants to get serious with us she calls us by our first names. she has 2 imaginary friends named wall-e and eve and talks to them all the time, sets them places at the table, pretends they're in the car with us, etc etc. she used to do it like every five seconds but not she only mentions them once or twice a day. it's cute. i would be worried if she didn't have imaginary friends. the other day something confused her and instead of saying "what the heck?!" she said "what is that heck?!" with the same articulation so it was extra funny. her new favorite place is the indoor pool at our rec center and i am seriously considering buying a membership there because she asks to go to the pool every day now. i'm shocked because she used to be terrified of swimming but she just set off the other day into the water (with her puddle jumper on) and had a great time. she is also a lot more interested in oliver these days and asks to hold him sometimes. it's very sweet.

look at him staring at her! my heart!

"oliver is awake mom! can i hold him now?!"

oliver is seriously SO happy now. which is such a relief. he was such an uncomfortable newborn that i thought we were in for a cranky one but he has done a 180 and is mr jolly right now, which makes sense, you know, because he's fat. fat people are all jolly. {except michael moore. he missed the memo}. oliver is 8 months now and he's going to be a year soon and I CANNOT HANDLE IT! luckily he still can't crawl so i feel like i still have my baby even though he is over 2 feet tall and 22 pounds. it's really hard to pick him up and hold him close (not like he ever wants to be held close anyway, the little stinker. i wasn't blessed with snugglers :( ) but it's ok because he is so cute and giggly. he is a squealer and a shrieker and it's very rare that we hear his actual voice but when we do hear it its very sweet and breathy and light which is music to my ears. he really only cries when he's hungry. which by the way, he only eats formula. he will. not. eat. food. any kind of food. only the bottle for this guy. i'm trying not to stress about it. he'll eat when he's ready. he also gets fussy when he's getting a tooth. today was the worst, he's getting a top tooth and he cried like all day and only slept for about 40 minutes total. i think he is dropping his last nap which is ok because it makes our days a little more flexible. he has to wear a helmet for a while because his torticollis really messed up his head, face and ears. again, our amazing insurance covered the whole thing. we really are so blessed. i don't know how long he'll have to wear it for but it doesn't seem to bug him so it's whatever. bradley is still his favorite person in the whole wide world, followed closely by bea, and then me. oh well. at least bea loves me. but now every time i tell her no she has a tantrum and cries for daddy. so maybe dad is the crowd favorite around here. oh well. c'est la vie.

see how much he loves food?

the wonderful days when they both fit in the cart. i hope this period lasts for a long time!

that about sums up life right now. we are lucky people around here.

getting to know you

we blessed Oliver today!
not that i have any pictures of it or anything but it happened! so hooray! it was a nice day surrounded by family. we're prreeettty glad to be so close to everyone now. makes days like these a lot less work. and much less expensive. (no plane tickets, amiright?!)
anyway. oliver will be 7 weeks tomorrow and i feel like i finally know who he is as a person. or rather as a baby bc i don't feel like you know who they are as a person until they're like 18 months.

he had a few weeks where he was really gassy and constipated, and overtired from not sleeping because he was so uncomfortable, and he ended up just crying/screaming/fussing all. the. time. i had begun to think that i just ended up with a fussy baby when one day i fed him more than his typical 4 oz and he gulped it down! i was starving my poor baby! i guess i just could not fathom that a baby his age could want so much to eat but i guess you learn something new everyday. it didn't solve his gas problems though unfortunately. he wasn't screaming anymore but he was still visibly uncomfortable like 70% of the time. i felt bad for the poor guy so i finally posted a fb status asking people for help, -ANYTHING- to help with my poor, constipated, gassy baby. i got a lot of really great suggestions, and ended up switching his formula and using some special bottles and he is MUCH more content now. less gas, more poop (he even had his first blowout today at brad's parents' house. on their bed. oops). blowouts aside, smiles all around.

i've been able to re-read some of my favorite book on baby-sleep as well and it refreshed some great information. and now, since he's become more content, i've been able to get to know what he likes, what he doesn't like, how he likes to be soothed etc. and his day sleep has also been much improved. his night sleep has always been great. he's even started doing even LONGER stretches so basically for all intents and purposes, he's sleeping through the night. what can i say? i make great sleepers. during the day, he takes several naps at consistent times and intervals now, which is earlier than i remember bea falling into a predictable schedule. i love that he's more predictable now though, it will make toting him and bea around a bit easier. he likes to be swaddled and held close while falling asleep, while sucking on a pacifier. when he's ready to finally sleep he spits it out, i put him down, sort of on his side (but mostly on his back) and he sleeps wonderfully.

he's finally started to smile and coo a bit and i am loving it. i finally look at his face and think "how did i ever survive without you?" i'm not sure why it took so long to get to that place. i suppose it's just because i don't deal well with change. i had such a beautiful routine with just bea and i, and i think the break in it rocked me quite a bit; way more than it rocked her. she never once questioned that baby brother was ours and here for good. we had been talking and leading up to it for so long that when it finally happened, she was like "finally! yes!!!! i have a brother now! let's keep it!" whereas i was like "HOW CAN I LOVE TWO BABIES WHAT WAS I THINKING?! I AM A HORRIBLE HUMAN!" all of that has thankfully subsided and our family of four is perfectly complete.

i keep wanting to get family photos of the four of us, but i won't be happy if i immortalize myself at this size. call me vain but i don't want to pay for a photoshoot where all i'll see is how enormous i am. we'll get em done in october, when the leaves get pretty. (or as pretty as they get here. i will always miss my new england leaves. "fall foliage" if you will.)

anyway. i'm feeling better since my last post. i'm happier. i'm enjoying two more than struggling with two. and i know it will just keep getting better and i am just so excited for what our future holds. i love my little family!!!

and now some amazing pictures of my little loves from a spur of the moment candid shoot 2 weeks ago by a dear friend of mine.

i love his great big googly eyes

don't mind the pink flowery bouncer...it's a bea leftover we keep at gramma's house

baby brother's birth (oh and our cross-country move)

you guys.
seriously.
this month has hands down been the absolute CRAZIEST month of my adult life. bar none. no competition. i'm surprised we made it through alive and in one piece. my mind is blown. let's take a look, shall we?

May 23: my mother flies to connecticut to help us prepare for the movers to come wrap up our house

May 27: mom, bea, and i fly to utah on the longest travel day of my life. if you want to avoid crusties from every human in an airport, don't fly after 36 weeks pregnant. actually, how about just never fly in your third trimester? it is miserable and awful and i will never do it again (also i will never be pregnant again. beside the point.) luckily, with the help from my amazing mom, bea was completely entertained and i at least got to read in peace during the flights (there were two.) rather than wrangle a disoriented toddler.

May 28: we pick up my sister (who has last-minute returned home early from her mission due to a nasty case of mono) from the airport

May 29: i begin house-hunting with my mom, sister, and daughter in tow

June 1: i meet with my new OB/GYN, we go over my birth plan, which is very specific because we want to avoid the horrible recovery i had after delivering bea, all looks good. we make weekly appointments until i deliver.

~somewhere in here, i buy a minivan~

June 5: movers pack up our CT apartment and load up the truck with the estimated utah arrival window set to "june 9-29" awesome. gotta love some precision.

June 6: our car back in CT is loaded up to be shipped to utah with an esitmated arrival window of "2 to 20 days". again, with the precision. loving it.

June 7: Bradley FINALLY joins us in utah

June 9: bradley and i sign a lease on a home in sandy that will remain empty until our movers decide to get here

June 10: bradley's first day on the new job! lots of fun, lots of excitement. he's a happy dude.

~i am extremely uncomfortable and hugely pregnant~

June 14: i turn 26! adulthood! happy birthday to me!

June 15: i go to the dr. i'm 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced! progress is being made!

June 16-18: i waste away in 39 weeks pregnant misery

Friday June 19: i watch paul blart mall cop with the fam. i have consistent contractions the whole time and several hours after! could this be it?! i call the hospital. they say don't come in unless you can't talk through your contractions. they don't admit you unless your water has broken or you are at a 5 (?!WHAT!). i stay at home. contractions stop by 5 am.

my mom kept following me around friday to take pictures of how ridiculous i looked bc i was so big. isn't she great?

Saturday June 20: contractions continue on and off throughout the day, in the evening severe back pain sets in. is this the dreaded back labor? it is pretty much the most painful thing ever. i don't sleep all night.

i had my surge of energy that day. i still haven't gotten it back...

Sunday June 21: back pain continues throughout the day, contractions are on and off but not regular. (somewhere in here brad gets the phone call saying, hooray! the movers will be at the house tomorrow morning at 8 am!) by evening the back pain gets too much to bear, it's constant, unlike contractions, and i'm getting to the point where it hurts so bad it's hard to speak. at 8 pm we call the dr on call, who says to come to the hospital, get checked, and if i'm not yet to a 5 we could always call my dr to ask permission to induce me. sounds legit. bradley and i go to the hospital (a 45 minute drive. with contractions and supposed back labor. not fun.)
we get there, they check me, and i'm at 3.5 cm, 80% effaced. not enough to admit me, esp since my contractions are still so inconsistent. the nurse asks about the nature of my back pain and then whacks me in the back. it hurts SO bad it knocks the wind out of me. she says it seems not like back labor but a kidney problem and sends my urine for a culture. turns out i have a UTI?! no other symptoms except the kidney pain, no fever, no pain urinating, no blood in the urine. we are stumped. the pain flares up again so they give me pain pills and antibiotics for the UTI, which i promptly vomit up because i am in so much pain and they also didn't give me anything to eat with them and it's midnight at this point and i haven't eaten since 5. they try again, but i am still writhing in pain, whereupon they give me a fentanyl drip in my arm. it lasts an hour whereupon they tell me to rest while they wait to hear from my doctor about whether or not they can induce me. an hour later, the fentanyl drip wears off and i am again in excruciating pain, when the midwife concludes that i most likely have a kidney stone that has caused my infection, that it is agitated by the baby's movements and my contractions, and that is the source of the pain i'm feeling, and the only way to deal with it is pain management and trying to pass the stone and kill the infection with antibiotics. oh and to get the baby out asap. since they still haven't heard back from my doctor about inducing me, she won't be in until 8 am, and their policy says they can't keep me for longer than 6 hours without admitting me officially, they decide to send me home at 4 am, crying hysterically in pain, with a prescription for pain pills that i can't fill until 2 hours after the current ones wear off because there are no 24 hour pharmacies for miles. yay. we return to my mom's house. she is outraged that we have been sent home but tucks me in and tells me to try and get some rest. my back settles down enough for me to get some rest around 5 am.

Monday June 22: at 6 am my back flares up again, tears ensue, bradley wakes up and has to head down to sandy to meet the movers. i drift off but wake up again at 7 screaming and throwing up from the back pain. mother has had enough, she calls the hospital in a rage demanding they take me back immediately and admit me and at the very least get me some pain relief. the midwife who attended to me the night before says mother is completely right, the hospital's policy is ridiculous, i should never have been sent home in that condition, to bring me back immediately and we will get that baby out and fix that kidney. i get a blessing from my dad so i can endure the long drive to the hospital and my back settles down. my dad brings bea to my in-laws for the day, and mom, abby and i head to the hospital and make it there in one piece.
we check in and they are all wildly accommodating, saying they are expecting me, they've talked to my dr, they will admit me immediately, give me an immediate epidural after giving me iv pain meds to relieve my back, and start pitocin once my dr arrives. my nurse is awesome. i am making a mental note now that i still need to send her a gift. we call brad and tell him i'm going to be induced like right now and to make it over as soon as the movers are done. he is very excited and says they are almost done (at this point it's like 10:30 am) and he will grab something to eat and then head over
my doctor arrives, the epidural kicks in, my back is finally somewhat relieved (it doesn't completely go away because my kidney goes slightly higher than where the epi goes in, but it is significantly reduced. eventually it goes away at some point in the day.) she checks me, i'm at a 4 and 80%, the pitocin starts at about 11 am. THE BABY IS COMING SOON!
abby ducks out of the hospital for a bit for an appointment somewhere. my dad works at the university so he pops in for a bit to keep us company. brad makes it over by 12:30/1pm. we all hang out and chit chat for a while. abby comes back at like 2, dad leaves. bradley decides that his outfit just won't do for having a baby, because he is in his grubby moving clothes and abby just likes shopping so after i get checked and am decidedly only at a 6, we figure they have time to dart over to the nearby nordstrom rack and grab him a new shirt.
the dr comes in like 45 min later and says i'm at a 9 and 100% effaced, let's prep for pushing! she'll be back in a few to get started! we frantically call brad and abby and tell them to come back. they are checking out and say they will be back soon. we text dad and he comes back. abby and bradley make it back just after the dr comes back in at like 3:45. by just a little after 4, i am all set up to push, and after some great pushes, oliver is born at 4:55!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the first thing everyone says is "WHOA HE IS HUGE!!!!!" and "I KNEW HE'D HAVE HAIR!!!!"

pink, purple, and smushy, just how i like em.

look at that guy. a natural. and how about that shirt?

when bea was born, she was silent and wide-eyed for like a solid 45 minutes until people started poking and rubbing her down. oliver screamed for 25 solid minutes until i could finally sit up after delivering my placenta and getting stitched up (2nd degree tear! that baby was HUGE.) and then i could nurse him (he latched almost immediately which is surprising, considering he is tongue tied! we're getting that fixed in a week, i am not excited about it.) after adequate soothing, they weighed him and lo and behold, he came in at 9 LBS!!!!! I DELIVERED A 9 LB BABY!!!!!!!!!!!! he's also 21.5 inches long, which i could have told you. that kid took up soooo much space in there.

we were wheeled off to the maternity ward, the in-laws came to see the baby with bea in tow, she was a little bewildered but mostly excited. and after that, honestly it's a blur, i do not remember most of the rest of that day. 3 sleepless days and nights ending with the biggest feat of humanity takes a lot out of you. the rest of the hospital stay was (thankfully!) uneventful compared to last time, they scanned my kidney and it was clear of any stones so we suppose it either came out in my catheter (which they searched each time they emptied it and didn't catch anything but they could have missed it) or that my kidney was just extremely inflamed from the UTI and the baby's constant agitating it and my contractions were exaggerating the inflammation pain. good news is, i do not have to pass a kidney stone unassisted. hallelujah.

we came home on wednesday, my mother in law was at our new home with bea waiting for us, and bea was SO EXCITED to see baby brother again. we walked in the door and she ran up to us screaming "OLIVER!!!!!!!!!!" it was painfully adorable. the house was in surprisingly good shape considering the movers had only come 2 days before. my mom and mother in law and brad had been working feverishly while i was in the hospital to get things more or less ready for us to settle in by the time we got home. over the next few days, i laid around a lot and my mom and bradley finished unpacking our house. by saturday, everything was done! hooray! i still have a little organizing projects to do here and there but it looks like we've been here forever. and brad still has a whole week left of paternity leave! i am very excited for this week because it feels like a do-over come-home week from the hospital. now that we don't have a ton of moving tasks to do, we can finally relax and focus on getting used to becoming a family of four.

this post has mainly been a "facts only" post because i honestly don't have the energy to write about all the feels i'm having right now. i am all over the place emotionally. a lot of it is post partum hormones (let's be real, most of it), but obviously all these changes happening at once has thrown me (and bea) completely for a loop. i'm sure it's thrown brad too but he has totally been our rock in this situation since getting to utah and i am eternally grateful. luckily, oliver has followed in his sister's footsteps and is a fantastic sleeper. he would sleep through the night if we let him, but he needs to get back to his enormous birth weight before we can let him do it. so he does 4 hour stretches at night, brad wakes up at 2:30 and 6:30 to feed him, making sure that i sleep as much as possible. he is such an amazing dad. it's amazing to see how comfortable he is with oliver right from the start compared to how tentative and nervous he was when bea was born. he is a skilled professional now. superdad, if you will.

i'm physically feeling much better now, a week later, with only a little bit of pain leftover from my stitches but that's basically it. sticking to my detailed birthplan made an ENORMOUS difference and i had a completely normal recovery, free of extreme swelling and distended bladders and foley catheters and all that ugly stuff. i didn't realize i could feel so normal so soon after having a baby and it is such a blessing. i am so grateful to have such a healthy recovery this time! it has really taken my stress levels down a notch, so that's good.

i could NEVER have made it through all of this without the help of my family and my in-laws. they have all been so helpful and have confirmed that we have definitely made the right choice in coming out here to be closer to them. is being in utah hard? it is. i look out the windows and don't see any tall trees for miles and my heart sinks a little as i remember that i now live in a desert, thousands of miles from new york, but the trade-off of being close to family is invaluable and i am so grateful to be here. i hope i get used to it soon. i hope i get used to a lot of things. luckily, life is not a race and i have all the time in the world to figure this out.

westward, ho!!

you guys. the rumors are true.
this little crew is moving out west. to UTAH. (WHAT?! but, caity! you said you'd never---)
I KNOW WHAT I SAID!
but when your husband gets offered the job of his *dreams* that also happens to be just skip and a hop from your mama's house.... YOU GO!

here's the scoop:
brad works in video games, right? so there's this thing (let me see if i get this right) called "AAA" which is basically the select few big-league video game companies, where if you break into them, your career in video games is made. Ooo i just looked it up on wikipedia ok here is what it means:

"In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers." -- wikipedia 

basically, if you're in games, AAA is where you wanna be! so, we discovered a AAA opportunity that happened to be in the salt lake area that was waaaay too good to pass up. perfect company, perfect position, perfect team. so he went for it and got it! we are beyond thrilled for him, this is such a big step in his career and we couldn't be more excited.

also...did i mention it's only an hour from each of our parents?!?!?!
and did i mention we would be cutting our rent, living expenses, and basically all of our costs almost in half by leaving the east coast?
it's basically a win win. win win win.
will i miss the beauty and culture of the east coast? yes.
will i miss all the people i love dearly out here? very yes.
will i miss the exorbitant cost of living? no, no and no. bye felicia.
will i miss brad's commute and long work hours? no.

oh and i bet you're also thinking "but like aren't you having a baby in like a week?" well no, i'm having a baby in FIVE weeks. which means my time left where i'm actually able to fly is limited, so basically.....bea and i are leaving in 10 days. (WHAT?!) we are going to stay with my parents in midway while we find a place to live and then bradley will join us out there the 2nd week of june, at which point *hopefully* we will have a house leased and the movers can bring us all our stuff to said house. we're hoping to be settled somewhere by brad's june 10th start date. a little ambitious, but we've done it before in less time, with less help. the moving package they're offering us is making this all so wonderfully easy, it seems a bit unreal. we are so, so grateful!

this whole opportunity is such a blessing and the answer to many many prayers. we have been thinking of ways to be closer to our families for a while now and this is above and beyond any solution we could have hoped for. we are truly, truly blessed.

being on the east coast has been a wonderful experience for our family, we love so many things about it, and a part of me will always call it home. it's bittersweet that this season of our lives is over. i've loved introducing the east to bradley and loved sharing east coast experiences with bea that i also had when i was her age. i will miss my proximity to the city...it's been a security blanket for me these last 8 years. even if i don't go as often as i could, i've known that i could and that was always comforting to me. it scares me to be far away from new york for some reason. i always feel like a piece of me is missing when i'm too far away; i felt that the 8 years i lived in texas and i'm sure i'll feel it when we make it out to utah. i'm a little nervous about utah culture and fitting in someplace where we don't really fit the mold, but living close to family in an affordable area with bradley at such a great company with a great work/life balance is going to make it all worth it. i really can't wait to get this new chapter started. it's going to be EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a bit about bea pt 4

bea got hot this morning while we were hanging out in my bed (our usual morning practice for when she wakes up too early) and asked if i could help her take off her jammies, so i did. and then i looked over at my baby girl in a little white cami and big girl underwear and wondered where the heck my little baby in diapers and onesies went and what the heck happened?!

i realized a while ago that i was long overdue for an entry on bea but i've been avoiding blogging for a while because our family is more or less in a time of transition and i can't spill every little detail in an update, and whenever we're in that phase, i just avoid the blog. but as i get older, i realize that life is more or less always in transition, and if i neglect to jot down my memories every time my life isn't 100% together i'm basically going to have a whole lot of holes in my records. so, today, i blog!

-milestone alert: bea is finally, for all intents and purposes, potty trained. she wears big girl underwear every day, tells us whenever she needs to use the potty (though does need a few reminders throughout the day), and for the past week and a half, she has been dry throughout the night. i have a bunch of size 4 diapers that i thought about giving away but then i remembered i'm totally turning this girl's world upside down in a month and i'm expecting some regression. so we'll cross that bridge when we get there. she got a doc mcstuffins doctor kit for her first 3-day dry stint and i have probably gotten 8000 checkups since that day. but not she mostly asks for me to give her checkups. she likes to be the patient for some reason...

-bea's imagination is active and often hilarious. she has a tub of little action figure toys ("guys") that consist of princesses, nintendo amiibo "guys", ponies, nemo figurines and a few other little guys which she likes to play with a lot. today she piled a bunch of them into her favorite pair of shoes and declared that they were going for a drive. she then made a "car" out of 3 chairs lined up one in front of the other, demanded i get in the back seat, plopped in the seat in front of me and put her guys in the front and we proceeded to "take a drive" for the next half hour. i wasn't allowed to move. we play games like this a lot.

***interruption: i'd just like to mention that in the middle of me typing that sentence, bea just peed all over the living room rug for the first time after 2 weeks of no accidents. potty training is a process i guess. a really. long. process.****

-bea is a really active "player". most kids her age don't play "with" each other, but "next to" each other but she really does like to engage in imaginative play with other kids. it can be tough when kids her age don't always get it and don't want to go along but she has a few special friends that will indulge her. she's always trying to hold other kids' hands and run from something with them but most kids her age really don't want their hands held for some reason. whenever i tell her we are going to play with friends she says "i hold her hand????" (everyone is "her", even boys. working on that.) she gets pretty crestfallen when she gets rejected, which is pretty much always. she is a tender soul who likes to give attention and affection and it can be a little much for most other kiddos who don't really know how to respond to it.

-whenever we play outside, bea's first order of business is to find an appropriate stick. she then proceeds to ask me "want a stick mom?" and finds me a stick. she really likes playing with sticks.

-she is SO excited for her baby brother to get here. every time we see a baby: "Look mom! like baby bredder!!!!!" she loves helping me open packages of baby things (gifts, gear i've ordered online, etc) and was very excited to help me wash all of his clothes yesterday. i think she kind of gets what's going to happen. whenever i ask when baby brother is coming, she makes her hands into fists, brings them up under her chin, smiles really wide, and whisper-squeals "in the summer! i so excited!!!!" she knows baby brother is a boy ("like daddy!"), she knows he is in my tummy, and she knows when he comes out he will be a baby ("so little tiny!"). she often asks to watch "baby bredder video??" which are all of my what to expect app and baby center app week-by-week pregnancy videos on my phone. her favorite one is the labor and delivery video. it's a computer animated, cross-section, diagram-like video of what happens during labor. she gets a good visual of how the baby is going to come out and how the mom goes from having a baby in there to not having a baby in there and i think she is really grasping that that is what's going to happen to me. at least it seems that way, i really have no idea what's going on in her head haha

-we have been done with the binky for almost 3 whole months! it was pretty painless, as she only used it at night and naps, so she basically just cried for like 5 minutes the night we took it away and was fine after that. i will say that it's harder for her to fall asleep during naptime now. and she doesn't take as good naps anymore (which could also be an age thing), but when we all really need a break and nothing else works, i'll sometimes sneak her a binky during naptime and it gets her right to sleep like old times. and she doesn't ask for it again after that either. i think we are just lucky with her that way. whenever she sees a binky anywhere she says "i dont use a binky. they for baby bredders." so i think we are on the right track with that.

-bea's fallen in love with the beach. it is her favorite place to be. she loves to collect "shelfs" in her bucket, dig in the sand with her toys, and dip her toes in the (freezing!) water. our beach has a playground with a million swings too, which are her other true love, so she asks to go to the beach pretty much all the time. so glad it's finally warm enough to do it and that we live so close! (even if it's only the sound and not the "real ocean")

-bea says her own prayers now, with no help. really, we get shushed when we try and help. she prays on our meals and says family prayer at night and her own prayers when she goes to bed. they usually include abby on her mission, blessing the strawberries (? dont know why she says this instead of whatever we are eating. but she always blesses the strawberries), gratitude for church and nursery annnnnd that's about it. we'll work on adding more when she feels like letting us help again.

-she LOVES ballet class ("bal-yay kloss." love that british touch on the word "class"..... don't know where it came from). this week is her last week of ballet and her recital is on saturday and i am just in pieces about it. it is the highlight of her week, and she loves sharing her moves with us daily.

-on the whole, bea is typically a delightful child, as anyone who spends time with her will attest to. she has her moments though for sure, especially when she is tired and hungry, and that's when her 2 starts to show. most days she is a joy, but yesterday (and i am not exaggerating here, i am 100% serious) she had a real, true, full-blown meltdown every 10 minutes except for the hour where i let her play in the tub. every. ten. minutes. so even the most perfect of children have their days.

-i was talking with some friends this past week about how we never really had to baby-proof anything for bea. she really has never been interested in "getting into things" around the house. she's never in the cabinets unless she needs a bowl or something, she never looks under the sink, she never fools with our electronics (which are not properly stowed by any means), and she doesn't like it when things aren't put away on shelves, so she doesn't usually get stuff off of them. she had a phase maybe when she was like 1 where she would get wipes out of the wipes box a lot, and get all of my *ahem* feminine items out of the bathroom all the time, but that's basically it. other than that, no messes with this one (meal time is a different story -_- even now that she's big). now that she's older and capable of moving things around, she still is pretty tame, and only moves furniture around when she wants a sippy cup off the counter or something. i am not expecting this to happen again with the next child.

-she still sleeps with her swaddle blankets ("sleepies"). she needs one white, patterned one on the right side of her face (either circles or stars. her preference changes daily.) and one solid colored one on the left side of her face (again, color preference changes daily). i have no idea why that started but it started in like february and is still standard bedtime practice.

i know there's more i've been meaning to write down but i can't think of it right now. pregnancy brain. i'll come back and add it if/when i remember. i'll add pictures then too.

can i just say though that these pregnancy mood swings are really no joke?! after i heard bea say "mommy i have peepees!!!!!" and watched in horror as she peed (and kept peeing and peeing and PEEING) all over the rug today, the pregnancy rage boiled up (which of course had to be suppressed because scolding is apparently the absolute no-no in potty training. all "good job"s and "we'll try again next time!"s.) but after the mess was somewhat taken care of and i started cooking her mac and cheese for lunch it literally just left and i was back to loving every aspect of my life, dirty dishes in the sink, still in pajamas at noon, endless laundry and all. it's amazing what spending your entire day serving someone else (and a hint of caffeine!) can do. especially when it's the last thing you want to be doing. yeah it can really be a crap job sometimes (literally) but there really isn't any better way to spend my time. at this point though i think i would rather be spending it with this little boy out of my belly rather than in. i am getting totes uncomfortable up in hurr.

a bit about bea pt. 3

with all of our holiday traveling, announcing the pregnancy and the gender, and recounting bea's birthday, i am realizing now that i haven't chronicled beatrice's little isms and developments lately! it seems like the time. i mean, the girl is TWO for crying out loud. where does the time go??

-bea has discovered princesses. she has liked frozen for a while but she has now moved on to cinderella, ariel {where i must fast forward all the ursula scenes to avoid certain tears}, and disney jr's sofia the first {fia-lella}. whenever she sees one of them in a pretty dress she says "she's a princess!!!!!" other favorite movies include the ever-popular nemo, toy story, and the aristocats. that last one is a big favorite.

-she has pretty much moved on to almost always speaking in complete sentences. if she whines or doesn't use a sentence, we will usually correct her and she'll use a sentence. they are missing articles or pronouns sometimes, but it's always very clear what she means.

-she is still all about dancing. she goes to a 2 year old ballet class on wednesdays, and my oh my is that too cute to behold. it is her favorite day of the week. she hops around the house singing "chasse, chasse, chasse!" and always asks when she can go to "ballyay?!" she loves her friends from the class and her teacher, miss monique. we bought just dance 2015 for her for christmas and she asks to play "the dancing game!" alllllll the time. we definitely got our money's worth out of that one. she observes for the first minute or so of each song and then gets in there and tries to do the moves on the screen. i love watching her brain work.

-she is still sleeping with a binky and blankie. except now she has to have 2 blankies at a time each night. who even knows what goes on in her brain?

-her favorite phrase is "beebee do it!!" she loves to be independent and do things herself. she can get her slip on shoes on and off herself, and can zip up her jacket if i start it for her. she likes to buckle herself into her carseat, turn off all of the lights by herself, close doors before we leave, and put her own toys away which brings me tooooo....

-her strange neuroses for leaving things exactly as she found them. she MUST put things back where she got them from when she is done using them {which is a great quality!} but can be a bit challenging when something gets left out by accident. i.e, the other day we left her tea set on the couch in its bucket. she wanted to play tea party, so we did, and when we were done she put everything back in the bucket and put it back on the couch. when i told her we should probably just put it where it goes she FLIPPED HER LID! no mom, we have to put things back where we find them. duh. same thing goes for her shoes. every day when we get home from somewhere, she goes to her room, turns on her lights, sits on the same spot on the floor, takes off her shoes, opens her drawer, puts them away, shuts the drawer, turns out the lights, and closes her door and comes back to the front entry to take off her coat and put it in the closet. i love how meticulous she is.

-aside from weekly dance class, we also go to 2 weekly story times {usually} at the 2 libraries in our neighborhood. bea LOVES story time. they do lots of songs and sometimes they get out a parachute and bubble machines and all kinds of good stuff. it's not like the ritz carlton of story times or anything but it's fun and low key and she loves it.

-bea has learned that the baby in my tummy is a boy baby, and for now he is named "baby brother" {"baby bedder!"}. she likes to help me pick out clothes for him and she can tell when i'm feeling tired and associates the two together now, and will come over and say "mommy tired. mommy has a baby tummy!"

-she's noticed me saying a lot of the same things the past few months bc of the pregnancy and has picked some up. so like, now if she doesnt want to do something she'll say, "i can't. i'm too tired." or "nope, i can't take a bath. i'm sick!" also, if you offer her something she's not interested in, she says "no thanks, i'm good." hahahaha i love that.

-bea now poops 90% of her poops on the potty, even when we are out and about. she really doesn't like pooping in her diaper so she always just tells me when she needs to poop and she goes on the potty. getting her to do more than 20% of her peeing in the potty is another story. i was reading through old posts today and saw that we started with the potty back in august. what a long road it's been....and we aren't done yet...i keep telling myself each case of diapers we buy is the last one but then it's not. oh well. we still have 4 months! one of these days i'll just have to let her pee in underwear a million times and maybe she'll get it. i mean i've tried it before and it hasn't worked but maybe i was doing it wrong? if anyone has any tips....they are welcome.

-she seems to have leveled out heightwise. at her last checkup she was in the 42nd percentile for height and 57th for weight, when normally it's 75th and 50th, respectively. but she eats all her fruits and veggies {and lovvvves to "dippit? dippit?" in ranch} so i'm not too worried. maybe she won't be super tall after all. who knows?!

-all her watching of aristocats has gotten her into the habit of saying "mama" after everything lately, as the aristocats do. "i need help, mama!", "i made a dinosaur, mama!" {during play-doh sessions. she lovvvves play-doh}, "i need to go potty, mama!" "i need a tissue, mama!" you get the idea. it was really cute for like a day and now i'm like...bea. we don't need to say it every time we say anything.

-just today she started talking to an imaginary "dory" after dinner, and was ushering her from room to room. it was weird. i don't know if it will become a habit or not but it was kind of funny.

-when we got back from utah, we were having crazy issues with her wanting to be held on the entire {long} walk from the garage to our apartment, which i really can't do now that i'm big and pregnant and usually have a lot of things to carry as well. after a ton of temper tantrums and lots of tears i finally sat her down and had a talk with her, and reminded her of our talk each time we were about to get out of the car, and that basically solved the problem by some miracle. so now whenever we're in the hallway, she reminds me "i don't cry in the hallway! i don't hold you in the hallway! i run run! i walk like a big girl!" it's very cute. i love how she really wants to be obedient and make us happy.

-bea loves to count and can count to ten on her own. she also knows several letters by sight and can sing her ABCs all by herself. she was eating a donut the other day and said "look, mommy! O!!!"

-she also knows most of her shapes, and likes to point them out. her favorites are triangles. we ate pizza today and she pointed to my slice and said "it's a triangle mama!!!"

-she lovvves to say prayers. she declares it her turn to pray each night for family prayer. she knows to include abby on her mission and always says how thankful she is for mommy and daddy and the "baby tummy". sometimes she'll throw in something she's thankful for that is way out of left field and really cracks us up. like "chickens", or "debbie's house" or something like that. she likes to fold her fingers and lace them together while she prays but always wants us to fold our arms. if we try to lace our hands, she corrects us immediately and won't continue until it's rectified. she is also the eyes police and makes sure we are always closing our eyes during prayers. she makes sure daddy is always on his knees but gives me an excuse because "mommy has a baby tummy. it's ok."

-bea is now able to really grasp complex stories whether they're movies or books. she has developed a recent love for frog and toad and it is super cute. we read our entire frog and toad treasury in a week and she was enthralled the whole time. i'm realizing now that we need to get more and more library books each week because her board books are just not cutting it for bedtime stories anymore!

that's all i've got for now. i love life with this girl. i can't wait to introduce her to her new brother, but i sure am grateful for all the one on one time we've been able to enjoy these 2 years (:

at puddle glen ballet. she is laser focused (:

cooking her babies dinner while i cook her dinner

making cookies out of play doh....we need more play-doh accessories...