we are happier here.

y'all, we bought a house! and strangely, that means i have so much more time for things i love-like writing on my blog!! i wish i would have written a blog on our normal day-to-day while living at my in-laws butttt i didn't have time! we lived on the third floor and with two kids, that meant a lot of running up and down the stairs and figuring out when i could feed them and feed myself. going to the grocery store was a huge chore because it was 25 minutes away and finding 50 minutes, let alone an hour and a half where both girls were awake and happy was a rare thing. now we have our own house with a kitchen on the same floor as us, laundry room on the same floor as us, garage on the same floor as us. i can get to the grocery store in 2 minutes (the nice HEB in 15) and when i get back i can unload the groceries with the door open while both girls are in their high chairs or playing and i can hear or see them both. it sounds simple, but trust me-it isn't. i can even do laundry while they are in their room together or one is asleep and one is awake. before i would have to do laundry while both children were asleep because carting our clothes down three flights of stairs and leaving one (or two) babies awake upstairs for the 5 minutes it would take to take the clothes down and start the laundry was not possible. it was extremely challenging. but here we are, in our own little house in san antonio, texas. life is good. 

 this is me as a baby. funny picture, but i think lucia looks like i do in this!

lucia grace  

 wearing shoes i wore as a baby 

(it took me 15 minutes to get them on her)

 primrose as the enormous bear at costco

 little babies

 this was this morning. i can't believe her hair is long enough to do pig tails and she is this tall and skinny. she is supposed to still be a chubby infant with no hair, i don't get it. she wears an eye patch 3-4 hours a day to help strengthen the muscles in her left eye. she wears glasses all the time because she is far sighted. she got them at about 16 months.

i found this picture of my gran while unpacking some boxes. i assume Don took it and i just think she looks so beautiful. 

utah and homeward bound!

when we got back to salt lake, we celebrated our 5th anniversary! my dad and katie watched Prim and Jon and I went to bruges waffles and frites for appetizers which actually turned into dessert! then we went to the copper onion and shared a burger and fries which was soo good!

prim wouldn't go to bed as easily as we hoped she would, but we were secretly happy that she was awake when we got home. we took her outside and she helped us let go of each of the five balloons one by one. each one representing another year of marriage, each better than the last. 

my dad likes to get prim up in the morning and get her dressed (and i like to sleep in a little bit!). almost every night, even in normal life, i pick out prim's outfit for the next day and leave it on her changing pad so the morning is easy. when i came down to see my babe, she was wearing her headband on backward. ah but still so cute!

baby alex came to visit with mike and kim! they are the best friends, they always cater to us while we are in town. that really is not necessary, but we appreciate it so much. 

they are four months apart. don't they looks alike with their pale skin and bald heads?? so cute!

kim text me and said that mike got teeny a present (we told them a few weeks previous that we were expecting again!). i didn't think it was weird at all. i opened the card and it said something along the lines of "we know the perfect gift for your new baby..." i pulled out a tiny onesie and on it read "A new friend!!! baby bird coming december 2015!"!!!!! i was not expecting that at all and freaked out! i am so excited for them!!!! all four of our babies are going to be so close in age, i hope they love it growing up as much as we have so far!

amanda nanny's this sweet little boy named sam. we took primmy over to meet him and i think she liked him more than he liked her:)

aunt amandy

here prim is with her great-aunt nancy.

we always try to fit a good hike in with amanda while we are in town. this time we did the living room hike. it was both easy and hard and was the perfect challenge for us. poor jon was sick and was huffing and puffing in this crazy altitude that we aren't used to.

finally our babies get to meet! here is elliott checking prim out.

elliott with his hot mom and mom's hot friend. we walked from their house to a cute everything shop and got sodas and treats. 

elliott wasn't too interested in prim, but he did such a good job sharing his toys with her! even if she was playing with a toy he wanted, he would just go get another one for himself. so sweet.

love my ladies.

dads walking to little caesars/7-11 for firewood. 

a couple days before memorial day we went up to idaho for our usual celebrations.

happy memorial day!
we got pictures with the cousins and couldn't resist getting a few of Prim by herself. the flag was Jon's idea.

this was one of the first times we did this with Prim and she loved it, haha!

all packed up. katie blessed us with all her baby toys Casper has grown out of. As usual, our car was packed to the actual brim.

as we were passing Payson i remembered the new temple! so we did a very brief detour in order to pass it. so beautiful.

we drove straight to the grand canyon! neither of us had ever been before and thought that was a real shame. we only spent an hour or so there.

from there, we drove to John and Kat's which was a couple hours away. they are spending the summer at his parents house while John trains with Edward Jones. it was so good to see them and although they both had to wake up ridiculously early, they waited for us and stayed up to chat! Prim was an angel on the drive and visited with us until we were all ready to go to bed. it was pretty late so it took awhile, but she finally fell asleep between us. such a dear. 

a fresh start.

[originally posted on 4/10/15]
being back home with prim and jon felt like a fresh new start although i was still not back to my old self. days when jon was home were typically okay. it was the days he went to school that were rough.

got her dressed by myself for the first time! her grandpa wasn't here to help.

here i am kind of a wild mess. this was two days after coming home and things were not going great. i was in so much pain and had so much going on her first two weeks that either i didn't notice my hormones going crazy or they waited to go crazy when my body started healing. i cried all day every day. jon would walk in on me holding or feeding prim and crying and crying. he'd have to drag me off the sofa to get some fresh air and gave me repeated pep talks. only a few short days of this and he dragged me to my OB to tell her what was going on and i got on zoloft pretty quick.

this is how many pills i was taking nightly and was also a source for my tears.

we got home on monday and on thursday jon decided he needed to go back to school and take finals. i was alone with prim for the first time!

i vacuumed while she napped!

took pictures of her with my flowers my MIL sent me.

and oogled over the darling. she threw up so many times and i didn't know until jon got home that i was using the wrong nipples and she was getting too much too fast. so sad!

my girlfriends from pure posh came to see me, my first real visitors! they were so kind and excited about the baby. i needed visitors so badly, i was very happy they came over.

kathy told us she used to bathe her babies like this, holding their head and letting them suck on her finger. we tried it with prim and she LOVED IT. she is such a water baby. she'd just float around and kick her little legs.

part of the reason for all my tears was accepting that i couldn't breastfeed. there's no way i could have known that this news would have hit me this hard. jon was beyond supportive and encouraged me to get skin to skin with prim. i was still sleeping and laying around a lot and didn't have any energy. jon had to get up with her every night and after a short while of holding her i had to pass her off. when i would hold and feed her i would just cry. i'd listen to jon holding prim in the other room while i laid in bed and he'd read her poems, sing to her and talk to her. when i held her i just looked. for a couple weeks he'd gently encourage me to speak to her so that she could hear my voice. i felt like such a failure for a mother. after i stopped breast feeding i felt like i was replaceable as a mom. it didn't seem like prim needed ME, but that anyone could watch and feed her. i didn't know how to get up with her in the night, give her the right bottles or even talk to her. 

my little baby with jon. though this was all horrible, many blessings came out of it. it didn't take jon long at all to jump into the dad role because he was shoved into it. he knew how to take care of her 100% and he is so good with her.

poor baby's scar from her IV.

i had doctors appointment after doctors appointment. one almost every day. i'd wake up in the night dreaming that a nurse was standing over me ready to draw my blood or give me medicine. i'd out of the blue start crying missing the nurses who were so kind to me and sad for myself about how everything happened. it didn't feel like all of it had happened to me, but to someone else that i felt so sorry for.

jon was always trying to get me to smile. i don't know how he stayed so positive through all of this-it probably scared him to see me in such a terrible state.

maybe this is why. our angel baby.

at her three week appointment prim was up to 9 pounds! this would have NEVER happened if we hadn't decided to formula feed her. i tried to remind myself of this every time i started to get sad. my baby was gaining weight and had a much better disposition about her. 

when jon would go to school i'd either sit downstairs with my father in law or jon would tell them to come up and sit with me. one night john and kathy both walked in while i was feeding prim and crying. neither of them mentioned my tears but just started talking to me and before i knew it hours had gone by and jon was home. i will never forget how much they helped me during all of this.

sweet brittany sent me a get well package/congratulations!!  it cheered me up so much to know that someone so far away was thinking of me and my baby. she (unfortunately) understands a not very fun delivery experience and was very encouraging to me. 

trimming prim's nails for the first time! katie told me to wait two weeks so that i didn't hurt her, but i actually waited over three weeks because of everything. i loved when she fell asleep on me like this!

morning snuggles with daddy.

this is about the time i started to feel a bit better. the zoloft was helping, i was feeling better every day, and jon's pep talks were sinking in. 

addie's friend lauren was so kind and brought us dinner and presents. she has three kids and a LOT going on, but she still took the time to help us out and come visit. 

amanda flew into town that evening and it could not have come at a better time. jon and i were taking prim on lots of walks and i was getting stronger every day. i started talking and singing to our little baby and getting more comfortable taking care of her by myself. i remember one time i was feeding her and crying my eyes out. i looked down into her eyes and it was like looking into a mirror. she had MY eyes, she was MY baby. i am her mommy and no one can replace me, no matter how i choose to feed her. it was a spiritual experience that i needed. 

it is hard for me to write about this because i didn't want it to be this sad and hard to transition into motherhood, but i need to remember what it was like and the support i got from my family and friends. i'm so blessed to have jon's family here to support us and offer help at all times of the day, friends who are close and are new who took the time to make sure we were taken care of, a tiny beautiful baby who i can and do stare at day in and day out, and of course jon who was scared out of his mind to see me so sick and sad but never showed it. i'm so glad i picked him and he picked me.