Baby Blessing and Family Pictures

The first week in March we blessed baby girl. Morgan gave her a beautiful blessing. My mom made her the prettiest little dress. After the blessing we got together and took family pictures, and then headed to our little apartment for homemade Cafe Rio! I hadn't had broccoli since having Eva and the day before her blessing I happened to eat some. Poor little girl had the most upset stomach the next day. She cried all day except for during her blessings and during pictures. Guess I won't be having broccoli anytime soon. Here are the family pictures we took. It was nice to get a few shots of just our little family.

Living with a Newborn

Little Eva has been waking up at 5 or 6 each morning wide awake and ready for the day and I'm afraid her poor mommy is just not up to starting her day that early.

Last night, she woke up for her 1:30 feeding and in order to help Morgan stay asleep, I fed her in the living room in our nice recliner. After she was done we both were too tired to move, so I slept the rest of the night in a chair.

It is hard not getting enough sleep, but that little girl will look at you and smile and you just forget how tired you are. She definitely has both of us wrapped around her little finger.

I did my own baby shoot for her, with our new fancy camera. Here are a few of the pictures we got.

She really is the cutest (yes, we are aware that we may be biased). So, even though she wears us out, she's worth it.

New things she is doing:

- She has started smiling for everyone

- She can see farther than a few inches now

- She has started to laugh

- She is awake for more time throughout the day

- She is starting to sleep for longer chunks at night (Hallelujah!)

Valentines Day 2014

We had the best Valentines day yesterday! We made dinner for ourselves and just relaxed and watched movies for the evening.

Here is our dinner spread:

We also made each other our own valentine cards and set them out for each other in the morning. Morgan even made Eva her own little teeny valentine. Isn't he the sweetest?

Love is in the Air

Valentines is upon us. Morgan and I are having a Valentines date-in this year. So the three of us will just celebrate our family love over steak and shrimp and a movie or two.

Dear baby Eva is growing up so fast! She is so smiley and has even let out a couple giggles for her daddy. I've been having so much fun lately playing dress up with her. Little teeny clothes are just the cutest!

We are still considering law school offers and trying to decide where we will be spending the next three years of our lives. Morgan has been accepted to Chicago, Virginia, Michigan, Boulder and BYU. We are still waiting to hear from Harvard and waiting to hear what type of scholarship offers we'll receive. My dear Mr. Morgan is sure a smarty-pants. BYU has a particular interest in him because of some research he has done for a member of the faculty. Much to our delight the BYU law school invited us to dinner at La Jolla Groves on Monday. I had a delicious sun dried tomato shrimp pasta dish that surprisingly had orange peel in it and it came close to the best thing I have ever eaten. I recommend this place, go before you leave Provo! Oh, and a little tip, when ordering the berries and cream dessert ask for it sans alcohol. ;)

Happy Valentines everyone!

Loss and Contemplating Life

This past week Morgan's Grandma Heiner passed away in a car accident. We attended her funeral on Monday up in Idaho. It was a great time for visiting and remembering a wonderful woman. I only knew her for a year and 9 months, but I loved her so much. She was such a happy sweet lady and hearing about her life this last weekend only solidified that thought. The world truly lost one of its most stalwart people. I'm sure she is busy on the other side.

My sister-in-law Aleisha wrote a blog post about how death often causes us to pause and consider what is most important in our lives. I definitely felt that way this past week as I also learned that a 21-year-old friend of mine from BYU was hit by an avalanche and didn't make it. Life can be so fleeting and be taken from us at any moment. Trials and loss are all a part of this life. My faith, love for the Lord and family are what are most important to me.

Eva's Birth Story

Our dear Eva is a stubborn girl. I started having contractions at around 35 weeks, but they would always go away. I tried EVERYTHING I could to induce labor naturally (all the old wives tales), but nothing worked. I had my membranes stripped three times and it didn't do a darn thing. We desperately hoped she would come before Christmas, but as the holidays drew nearer we then desperately wished she would come after Christmas. We went in to see the doctor on the 26th and he checked me. I was still only dilated 1.5 centimeters.  She was NOT coming on her own. So, we decided to schedule an inducement for the next day.

We went in to the hospital at 6:00a.

Here is my last pregnant picture. I am 9 months 1 week and 1 day pregnant in this picture. 

They checked us in and took us to our room and got me hooked up to everything. They started the pitocin on the lowest dose at 7:30a. We then settled in and waited for contractions to start while watching Iron Chef America. The first 5 hours of contractions were not bad at all. I could feel them, but they didn't hurt in the least. The most uncomfortable thing in those first few hours was being hooked up to everything and so therefore not being able to move around freely. At 2:00p my doctor came in and broke my water. The contractions picked up from there…and I could feel them at that point. After about another half hour I asked for my epidural. I was nervous because the contractions were getting more intense and I was worried that the anesthesiologist would take a while getting to my room. Much to my relief he was in there 5 minutes later hooking me up. The relief was wonderful! I sat in total comfort for the next four hours. At 6:30p I was finally dilated to a four.  I was dilated to a seven at 7:30p and then was fully dilated to a ten at 8:20p.  At that point the nurse told me that the doctor might have me wait for an hour before actually pushing, but she would go check with him. I was not happy about that bit of news and earnestly hoped the doctor would have then sense to just let me start pushing. Thankfully pushing got underway immediately. It was hard work, but not too bad actually. I think I only pushed about 7 times. Little Eva was finally born at 9:01p. They put her right on my stomach and had me hold her while Morgan cut the umbilical cord (I was so proud of him!). I had heard, when I was researching natural birth vs. having an epidural, that some people felt like because of the epidural they didn't feel totally aware when their baby came. That was definitely not the case with me. Holding her on my stomach for the first time about made my heart burst. That was MY baby! After the umbilical cord was cut they wisked her over to a table to get her cleaned up and weighed.

She didn't let out any sort of loud cry which caused some alarm. After a few minutes they decided she needed to be taken to the NICU to make sure her lungs were opening all the way.

First daddy-daughter pic. Morgan was already SO smitten with his little girl.  

I sent Morgan with her and stayed behind to get stitched up. I tore pretty badly. Having a 10 pound baby leaves its mark. I had a 2nd degree tear going down and a 1st degree tear going up. It took them a good hour to stitch me up and then another half hour to finally get to go to the NICU to see my baby.

 First family photo.

I finally got settled into my recovery room at around 11:00p, and still didn't even get to hold my baby until 12:30a. I was so anxious to hold my little one (the after birth contractions and waiting to hold her were probably the hardest parts of labor for me). Consequently, when they finally brought her in, I held her skin to skin all night and hardly slept a wink…but it was worth it!

Now our little one is already 18 days old, starting to smile and really growing! Here are her newest facial expressions.

Late Christmas Card Pictures

Well, being new parents has definitely been an adventure so far. We love our sweet little girl. She has such big eyes and is happy when she is not hungry, getting a diaper change or having a bath. We are both tired from getting little sleep, but she is worth it.

We expected little Eva to get here before Christmas so we had Christmas cards ready to go all we needed was a picture of her. Since she was late, we found ourselves taking Christmas baby pictures of the little lady on New Years Eve.

So...happy (late) holidays!